


Doyle & Bodie - Am Fear Uaine

by Jaicen5



Category: The Professionals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:31:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaicen5/pseuds/Jaicen5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doyle and Bodie are out of touch, out of their element on a small island with secrets. Things aren't what they seem and a missing Russian is only part of the nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doyle & Bodie - Am Fear Uaine

Doyle and Bodie - Am Fear Uaine

 

_I do not own these characters nor claim any right to do so  
This fanfic is purely for entertainment purposes only_

 

**Chapter 1.**

 

Nicholai Petrov hoisted his rucksack more firmly onto his shoulders and squinted ice blue eyes against the lowering sun.  The air was cool, but not cold, not to Nicholai anyway, who was accustomed to much harsher April weather in his homeland, although the sharp tang of the sea was unfamiliar.  The ferry rumbled pleasantly under his feet and he breathed in the salty air with a sense of deep content, glad that he’d opted for one of the smaller independent operators, and not the larger fleet belonging to Caledonian MacBrayne, although judging by the fewer passenger numbers, it was debatable on how long they would stay in business against their larger competitor.  A shame really, the smaller boat with the unpronounceable Gaelic name, gave a real sense of a voyage, longer but infinitely more satisfying in the long run. 

He leaned on the rail and stared into the dark depths of the sea.  Antov had been right as usual.  What better way to escape the tensions of the last year than to lose himself anonymously in the west. He hadn’t felt this relaxed for years, here among the British as startling at that might seem, their ways and traditions so very different to his own.  He wondered, not for the first time since setting foot in this country, how his life may have differed had he been born here - to be English, with a penchant for endless cups of tea, Sunday roasts and an annual holiday to Blackpool. 

The water swirled around the hull of the boat, hypnotising, luring him with its siren’s song.  He had the most unsettling urge to jump in, surrender to the lure, feel the endless waves rock him, keep him safe.  A foolish notion and yet he was intelligent enough to realise that it wasn’t the siren call of the ocean that he was fighting, it was the longing to stay, to be normal, to never return home.

Turning his head fractionally to follow the flight of a gull, he noticed the man again and immediately his sense of contentment vanished.  Small and balding, gaze intent on the newspaper in his hands although his eyes weren’t moving, Nicholai wasn’t fooled, not when he’d lived in the shadow of his father for the past two years.  He had seen the man before.  At the station in Glasgow and again on the train to Oban.  Shaking his head resignedly, he attempted to ignore him.  If the man thought for a minute that Nicholai was anything like his father, he’d be sadly mistaken.

The wind cut abruptly as the ferry neared its destination, the third stop so far in this mass of small and large islands off the west coast of Scotland.  This island was much like the previous two, small and unremarkable, rising steeply from the sea to a rocky outcrop on the northern face.  A cluster of grey, dark buildings hugged the grey stone breakwater, and smoke wisps from various chimneys stained the clear air blue.  His curious gaze took in the small village, noting that it looked not only unwelcoming, but also desolate, depressing, and somehow faintly menacing.

The island was only visited twice a week, according to the timetable, the independent operator calling mid week and the larger Caledonian MacBrayne ferries doing the weekend loops.   The island people would surely depend on their connection to the outside world, isolated as they were, yet no one waited on the old stone wharf to board, and likewise no one seemed to be inclined to disembark, most of the passengers bound for Lewis as was he.  Leaning on the rail, he wondered what they did, how they lived.  Did they feel the expectations of a world they wanted no part in?  Were they content to live in seclusion bound by nature and their own wits?

Feeling eyes upon him once more, he turned his head sharply but the bald man was once again absorbed in his newspaper.  Nicholai glared at him with growing resentment.  Would the man follow him all over Scotland?

The ferry bumped gently against the wharf and the deckhand, from long practice, manoeuvred the gangplank into position, eyeing the few people on deck expectantly. No one moved, most just gazed indifferently at the landmass and the wheeling gulls overhead.  The deckhand raised a salute to the wheelhouse and the engines thrummed to life again, churning a blue green wake from the stern.  

Irked by the bald man’s persistent interest, Nicholai made a snap decision.  Just as the ferry was pulling away from the wharf, he quickly jumped across, landing on the solid stones agilely and earning a snarled rebuke from the deckhand.  He didn’t care.  He stood there in the crystal light and smiled at the crestfallen face of the little bald man, whose forgotten paper fluttered in the breeze as the ferry pulled away.  The smell of brine and tar and fertiliser was strong in his nostrils and he stood utterly alone, watching the ferry shrink in size as it steamed away and he felt… free.

 

 

***********

**Chapter 2**.

 

George Cowley pressed the button on the control in his hand and an image slid into view on the projector screen.  A young good looking man, fair haired and fit.   He perched his glasses on his nose and tilted the paper in his hand towards the dim light from the projector, enabling him to see the typed notes.  “Nicholai Petrov, son of Gregor Petrov, 22 years old, educated in Moscow, showed remarkable promise in business management and decided to take a break before starting work.”

“Working for daddy no doubt, business must be booming.”

Cowley ignored the not wholly unexpected snide remark from the street smart voice behind him.  Raymond Doyle, despite several years employed by CI5, still had a tendency to speak his mind, regardless of whom he was addressing.   

He pressed the button again and the image changed, showing an older man, grey haired, stout in middle age, although the stare and the posture echoed the previous image.  “Gregor Petrov, KGB, now terminally ill with cancer.  He never married the boy’s mother and Nicholai was raised by his maternal grandparents.”

The slide showed another picture.  A young woman, fair haired and beautiful.  “Anna Korchevya, of the Russian ballet, Nicholai’s mother.  She died when he was ten years old in a car accident.”

A loud yawn interrupted him. Cowley didn’t take his eyes off the projector screen.  “Am I keeping you awake Bodie?”

“Sorry, sir,” The bored voice behind him sounded anything but.  “Late night.”

William Andrew Phillip Bodie, despite several years employed by CI5, still had a tendency not to take anything too seriously, regardless of the severity of the situation. 

The slide shifted again, to show an aerial photograph of islands dotted over the sea.

“North West Scotland…..”

“There is a point to all this, sir?” Doyle interjected, reinforcing the fact that despite several years in CI5, patience was still not one of his strong points.

“The point, Doyle,” Cowley said briskly, “is that Nicholai Petrov entered the United Kingdom last year, ostensibly to backpack for ten months, travelled to Scotland and disappeared.” 

He consulted his notes in the dim view from the projector and frowned at the information.

“Missing persons?” Bodie said hopefully, reinforcing the fact that despite several years in CI5, routine enquiries still bored him.

Cowley finally turned around to face his operatives.  Doyle was staring at the screen sceptically while beside him Bodie viewed the images through half lidded bleary eyes.  As unalike as chalk and cheese, but somehow the partnership worked and Cowley had begrudgingly learned to overlook their unfavourable tendencies in favour of the results they were capable of producing.

“CI5, Bodie” George Cowley raised his voice in irritation.  “Since when do missing persons deal with defecting Russians?”

“Why was he let in?” Doyle asked nodding towards the screen.  “Son of an active KGB agent? Should have been stopped at immigration and sent back.”

Cowley turned back to the screen, “Aye, but there is no indication that Nicholai Petrov shares his father’s career path, and the Russian Ambassador raised a fuss with the home office about his entry visa.”  He flicked a switch and an elderly couple appeared on the screen.  They were stylishly dressed, flesh comfortably rounded and if influence could be seen, it would be hanging around their necks like a placard.  “Yuri and Ivanka Korchevya.  Personal friends of the Russian Ambassador.   When Nicholai came of age, Gregor Petrov rekindled his interest in the boy.  His grandparents disapproved. They decided that removing young Petrov from his father’s influence seemed the best course of action and arranged for him to come here.”

“Probably hoping daddy will pop his clogs in the meantime,” Doyle put in cynically, but Cowley nodded in agreement.

“Quite likely, but now he’s missing and they want him found.”  He paused briefly.  “Unfortunately, so does his father.”

“Why exactly do we care?” Bodie asked tiredly propping up his chin in his hand. 

“Young Petrov has been living with his father for the last year or so.”  Cowley gazed at the screen musingly.  “It’s likely Gregor wanted, or already has, recruited him to the KGB.  His grandparent removing him was a desperate attempt to avoid what they see as an unacceptable career path.  At this point in time, we don’t know where his loyalty lies.  KGB or innocent student, his disappearance has certainly stirred up some activity behind the iron curtain.”

He pressed the button and a familiar face appeared, harsh, cold, emotionless.  Behind him, he heard simultaneous groans. 

“Don’t tell me they’ve sent him?”

“Zelenko slipped into the country two days ago, according to my sources.  The KGB doesn’t send one of its top men just to return an errant boy, no matter who his father is.”

“So Daddy’s either done it on the sly or young Petrov isn’t all as he seems.  Could he be defecting?” Doyle queried, interested now.

“If he is, I want him.” Cowley replied still staring at the screen.

“How do we know he went to Scotland?” Bodie leaned back, stretching his spine, bones cracking as he locked his fingers together and raised his arms above his head.

“Interpol had a man on him, followed him as far as the ferry to the Hebrides but lost him there.”  Cowley switched off the projector and the lights came on.  “I want to know where he is before Zelenko finds him. I want to know why he disappeared in a remote part of Britain and what he is doing.  I want to know what is going on up there.”

“Finding a convenient spot to drop off a few agents, you mean,” Bodie said dryly.  “If he’s working for daddy.  Deserted, remote, come in by small boat, out again on the ferry, and what’s one tourist more or less.  And Zelenko’s been sent to check up on him.”

“Exactly.”  He swivelled around to gaze at them both.

“He’d hardly come in by the proper channels to do that, would he?” Doyle said ducking automatically away from Bodie’s lowering arms.  “He must have known he’d be watched.”

Cowley rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “Aye, Interpol admitted that the lad picked up their man and gave him the slip on one of the more remote islands.  He waited for the return ferry, but Petrov wasn’t on it and he eventually tipped off the local police who went across, but he wasn’t there.”

“What did the locals say?” Doyle asked, giving his partner a sharp nudge to rouse him.  Bodie jerked his eyes open and blinked.

“They aren’t saying anything.” Cowley admitted, casting Bodie a basilisk stare.  “The police couldn’t even confirm that he stayed there, no one seemed to recall him at all.  A Russian on a small island?  Tcha.”

“Well sir, they _are_ Scottish.”

Cowley glared at his dark haired operative.  “And that’s why you two are going in undercover.”

He was silently amused as identical and simultaneous expressions of annoyed dismay flashed across their faces.

“Undercover?”  Bodie, jerked to full wakefulness with that unwelcome news, gave voice to their grievance.  “In Scotland?”

“In April?” Doyle echoed in disbelief.

“So you _were_ listening.” Cowley observed dryly and pulled out two manila folders.  “If the locals won’t talk to the police, there’s no point in sending you two in an official capacity.  Petrov was rucksacking, using mostly youth hostels.  You, Doyle, are going to follow in his footsteps.  A nobody taking a break from study.  No one knows you are up there, no one to worry about you, and you are in no hurry to be anywhere.”

Doyle groaned unenthusiastically and Bodie smirked sardonically at his crestfallen partner.  “Least you won’t need a new wardrobe, mate.”

“Shut it you,” Doyle swung a glare from his partner to his chief.  “You can’t want me to trace him all the way from Heathrow?”

“No, no, no.”  Cowley handed over the folder.  “Just from Glasgow will do.  You can stay at the same places, talk to the same people, find anything that might explain his disappearance and keep an eye out for the KGB doing the same.”

He picked up the other folder.  “Bodie, you are now officially employed by Ordnance. You are a somebody and your office knows you are there.  There is a fault in the records, and you are going to rectify it.  It will give you ample opportunity to wander all over that island and find anything amiss.”

“Rains a lot in Scotland, I heard.” Doyle said vindictively satisfied and grinned at his partner’s suddenly glum look.

“Just be glad it isn’t summer, mate,” Bodie said mournfully.  “The midges are fierce in summer.”

Cowley, all business, ignored their griping and addressed his last remark to his dark haired, smooth operative.  “Stick to your cover, even with the local police, but see what you can get out of them, I want to know they searched that island thoroughly, if he’s there I want to know why they didn’t find him.  Keep an eye on Doyle here and check in frequently.”

He gathered his paperwork together in preparation for leaving.

“How long do we stay up there?” Bodie asked plaintively.

“Until you find him.”  Cowley stood up and looked at them both.  “Find him before his father does the job for us.”

 

********

 

“A whole year ago.” Doyle snapped the folder shut and tossed it into the rear of the car.  Slumping bonelessly into the passenger seat he propped one scuffed trainer up on the dashboard, adjusted his sunglasses and stared intently through the windscreen.  “I mean its hard enough finding stuff after a couple of weeks, isn’t it?”

Bodie glanced across, quirking a brow as Doyle leaned his left elbow on his raised knee and rubbed one long index finger reflectively across his lower lip.  To anyone else, Doyle’s easy sprawl could be interpreted as unconcerned lethargy but Bodie knew better.  His partner habitually worried at those full lips whenever he was worrying about a problem and Bodie sighed softly, resigning himself to the conjecture brewing in that swift and agile mind.  

“Don’t know what the Cow thinks we’re going to uncover after all this time.”

“Quite a vanishing act,” Bodie fixed his attention back on the M1.  “Maybe he was spirited away by faeries.”

“Oh yeah?”  Doyle muttered absently. “Do you mean the little ones with wings, or the limp wristed variety?”

“Laugh all you want, mate, but Scotland’s full of myths and legends and curses and inhabited with superstitious people.  Could have ended up in a wicker man for all we know.”

Doyle cast his partner a sceptical look.  “A what?”

“Wicker man.”  Bodie intoned solemnly.  “It’s an old pagan tradition, the locals build a large cage out of wicker, usually in the shape of a man and add the makings of a bonfire under it.  Then, they sacrifice some poor soul by locking him inside and setting it alight to appease their gods.”  He grinned as one disbelieving brow went up over the rim of the sunnies and added, “It’s to make the crops grow, sort of a fertility festival. They light fires and dance around them naked and have group sex in a field and the blokes are encouraged to project their...erm... offerings into the soil.” 

“Into the soil?” Doyle repeated, incredulously.  “Not into a bird.”

“Nope, into the ground... fertilising the earth, so to speak.   Although I expect a bird might help him along a bit.”   Devilment danced in dark eyes. “Be a bit difficult after all, wouldn’t it?  Trying to get turned on by dirt.” 

“Where _do_ you dig this stuff up from?” Unimpressed, Doyle leaned his head back and shifted long legs restlessly.

“It’s all true.” Bodie laughed, enjoying himself.  “Didn’t you ever see that Christopher Lee film?”

“A film?  You got all that rubbish from a film?”

“All fiction is based in fact you know,” Bodie said knowledgably. 

“Suppose you believe in Dracula, then?” was the derisive reply.  “Since Christopher Lee was in that as well.”

“Never mind him, you should have seen Britt Ekland... ahh, she was something else.”  Bodie’s lips curled in pleasant memory. 

“Just the sort of bird you’d find in the middle of the highlands too.”

Bodie smirked at his partner’s cynical observation.  “I actually spent some time up there with the SAS.  Strange lot, the Scots.”

“Cowley’s a Scot.”

“I rest my case,” Bodie said triumphantly and beamed at the road ahead. 

“Well what’s so important about him, that they all want him back?” Doyle grumbled reverting to his earlier grievance about the case.   “Has he got secret plans tattooed on his arse or something?”

Doyle’s scornful observation made Bodie smile.  “Well when we catch him, mate, _you_ can do the checking.”

A throaty chuckle greeted that statement and then Doyle got back to business.  “So daddy has twigged that his son and heir is missing and has a couple of agents, possibly Zelenko, over here to find him.  Or they are both working for daddy and we have to stop them.”  He shook his head in disgust.  “Why don’t they just open the borders right up to all and sundry and issue invitations?”

“We’ll there isn’t exactly a fence running around the perimeter, Doyle.” Bodie said reasonably.  “All you need is a small boat or plane.  Easy enough to circumvent immigration, if you know how.”

Doyle grinned at him.  “Speaking from experience are we?”

Bodie let his mouth curve in a reminiscent smile.  “Yeah, once or twice.  Fact is, KGB aren’t idiots, if they want to get in somehow, they will.”

“And how do we know they have?”  Doyle argued. He pushed his sunglasses further up his nose and went back to worrying his lower lip.  “Could be legitimate tourists for all Cowley knows.”

 Suddenly they looked at each other.  Bodie pursed his mouth, Doyle peered over the top of his shades. 

“Liverpool for the cup.” Bodie said succinctly.

 

******

**Chapter 3**

 

Glasgow was a dirty urban sprawl and Bodie parked some distance away from the youth hostel, just to be on the safe side, his expression speaking volumes.  The street was filled with litter and had an air of general neglect which blended well with the dirty grey buildings lining it, for the most part converted or empty warehouses.  A train went thundering past, invisible behind the dwellings on the opposite side of the road, the noise deafening.  He leaned against the Capri as Doyle lifted his rucksack from the boot and grinned superiorly at his glum partner.  “Ah to be young and free.  Best check yourself for lice in the morning mate.”

Doyle gave him a hard look as he slammed the boot down.  “Don’t give me that.  You’d have been on a first name basis with far worse during your little stint in Africa.”

Approaching voices cut off what promised to be a satisfying repartee of one upmanship and a couple of girls appeared from the direction of the train station.  Young, blond, all legs and jeans and Scandinavian accents, they tossed approving smiles to both men while making for the entrance to the hostel.

Doyle shouldered his rucksack and gave Bodie a smug sidelong look.  “You were saying?”

Bodie inhaled peevishly.  “They probably don’t speak a word of English.”

“Who needs English? It’ll be horizontal conversation, mate.”  Doyle’s annoyance at his assignment abruptly vanishing, he nodded at his partner.  “Be seeing you.”

Grumbling, Bodie dropped back into the driver’s seat and watched his partner stroll away to the hostel.

 

****

 

 

The desk attendant was young and red haired, and had the most blinding smile Doyle had ever seen.  She carefully wrote his name in the guest register and turned to find a key on the crowded rack behind her.  Doyle’s eyes shifted reluctantly from her tight fitting jeans, to the hand written register laid out on the desk in front of him.  He quickly slipped a finger under the pages, flipping them to look at the beginning of the book.  The date in the first column read the previous July.  Disappointed, but not really surprised he flipped the pages back again to his own entry before the girl turned back. 

He needed the register before this one if he wanted to find the guest list for when Petrov stayed here.  Sheila, the pretty attendant was muttering in her soft brogue, as she tried to find his room key.  Doyle waited patiently, his eyes taking in the filing cabinet to one side and the desk, mulling on where the previous register would likely to be kept.  Probably the filing cabinet, nothing he couldn’t do in the dead of night with his lock picks. 

“You been here long?” he asked, casually leaning on the counter, allowing his gaze to linger, enjoying the view as she bent slightly to see the lower racks.

“A couple of years.”

“You’d have seen some visitors then?”

“Oh aye, a fair amount.  From all over the world.”

“Yeah?  Doyle affected interest.  “I can see by the register here.  England, Ireland, Norway, Australia.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him.  “Australians are great travellers, they say as it takes such a long time to get here, they have to make the most of it.”

Doyle ran his finger down the entry idly and kept his voice light.  “No Russians, I see.  Scared them off, did you?”

“Tcha,” she made a rude noise in the back of her throat, the sort of scornful grunt that the Scots had perfected over the ages to indicate anything from mild disapproval to outright contempt.  “Secretive by nature Russians.  Canna tell if they are spies or no.  We get the odd one, had one just a couple of days ago, in fact.”

“Is that right?”  Doyle affected considerably more interest at that news.

“Aye, he was looking for a pal, thought he’d come this way.”

“And had he?”

“I dinna ken, he was talking months ago.”  The girl finally turned back with a key in her hand and smiled at him approvingly.  “Here ye go hen.  Mind the fifth stair, its loose aye?”

Doyle, beguiled by that wide smile took the key, deliberately letting his fingers brush against hers.  She gave him an encouraging look and raised her brows and he grinned before moving off to the staircase.  Half way up he heard familiar voices and looked up, eyes bright as two pairs of denim jeans came down.  The two blond women they belonged to paused, recognising him from the street outside.

Doyle let a smile pull at his mouth and his eyes half closed lazily.  “Don’t know where room 69 is, do you?”

 

***

 

Bodie checked into his small room, in a modest hotel around the corner from the Youth Hostel and decided to take a leisurely shower.  He soaped up in the small alcove and felt his stomach growl with hunger, admonishing his neglect over the past few hours.  Languidly, while attempting to encourage more water from the ancient shower rose, he considered his choices and his taste buds suggested a steak, medium rare.  Approving his taste buds recommendation, he rinsed off and stepped from the shower cubicle, stretching unused muscles as he reached for a towel.  But first he had to check in with Cowley. 

The pay phone in the lobby greedily swallowed his coins and rewarded him with Sally’s voice on the switchboard.

“3.7 checking in.”

“ _Stand by 3.7, patching you through to Alpha_.”

“Alpha.”

 Bodie leaned against the wall and surveyed the few guests in the lobby.  “Glasgow is nice this time of year.”

There was a pause before Cowley said; “Apparently it’s the number one holiday destination for Russians.”

An eyebrow rose.  “You’d think they’d prefer Spain.”

“If Gregor Petrov wants his son back badly enough, he won’t trust the job to just anyone.”  Cowley’s voice sounded satisfied.  “It could be a scoop for us.”

“What do we do if we come across some of these Russian tourists?”

“That depends on who they are, use your discretion and keep me informed.”

“Yes sir.”

“Oh, and keep an eye on 4.5, there’s no telling what he’ll get up to if he’s not watched.”

Bodie smiled and placed the phone back in the receiver.  Cowley had Doyle pegged all right - bloody nosy bugger, his partner, although the only thing he could see Doyle getting up to in that place, was that pair of leggy beauties they’d seen when arriving, half his luck.  His stomach growled again and he switched his mind from his partner’s proclivities to his demanding appetite.

It was late when he emerged from the pub, his stomach appeased and his thirst quenched, although he wouldn’t have minded Doyle’s company for the meal.  He walked without hurry back to the Capri, absorbing the late night sounds of a foreign city.  He recalled the time he’d spent in Scotland during training exercises with the SAS and remembered the isolation of the highlands, the loneliness of an ancient land and the tenacity of its people.

Across the road some youths kicked a can into the gutter and leaned against a graffiti covered wall to share cigarettes.  Bodie watched them for a minute and then glanced at his watch.  Nearly eleven.  Youth Hostels closed their doors at ten and Doyle would be locked in.  Bodie slipped into the Capri and turned the ignition, cranking the heating up to full.  He decided to coast past the hostel on the way back to the hotel.

 

***

 

Doyle waited for a full thirty minutes after all movement and noise had ceased from downstairs before throwing back the covers and pulling on his jeans.  He was lucky to have the room to himself, the season was still too early for holiday makers and the weather still too chilly.  Accustomed to a double bed, he had pushed the two rather narrow singles together and although the mattresses sagged a bit, it was not wholly uncomfortable, and better than trying to get a decent night in one of the bunks.

He slipped his small knife into his back pocket and took up his pencil torch before silently letting himself out of his room.  The corridor was dark and deserted, the hostel silent.  He remembered to dodge the loose fifth step on the way down to the closed office and easily let himself in, flicking the pencil torch to the desk.  The locked drawers proved no obstacle to someone who’d learned how to pick them at the age of eleven and Doyle quickly rifled the contents, before moving to the filing cabinet. 

The previous guest ledgers were in the bottom drawer and Doyle flicked pages quickly until he found Nicholai Petrov’s entry for the 25 April.  The names surrounding the Russian’s meant nothing to him but he dutifully copied them down and tucked the notebook back into his jeans pocket.  Sliding the drawer closed he relocked it and stood up carefully.  He hadn’t really found anything but then again, he hadn’t really expected to.  If they were to learn anything about Petrov, it’d more than likely be on the islands where he had disappeared not in an obsolete Youth Hostel in a dodgy part of Glasgow. 

He turned and left the office as silently as he had entered and climbed the stairs, halting near the top when he heard a lavatory flush, waiting until the sleepy guest had returned to his room before proceeding, sure as a cat in the dark. 

He was at the door of his room, when a tingling between his shoulder blades warned of a presence behind him.  Quickly he spun, hand reaching for his knife and his eyes widened in disbelief.

 

***

 

Parked unobtrusively across the road, Bodie found he wasn’t the only one watching the hostel, despite the late hour and the darkness of the night.  A cigarette glowed in the dimness as it was raised to a shadowed face.  He sat quietly in the car and watched as the man stared up at the hostel, his faint outline only visible with each suck of the cigarette.  Dark clothing disguised him, along with the dark night, but still he gave off an air of expectation, of waiting for someone.

Presently another shadow moved from the black outline of the hostel and joined him.  Their voices were too hushed for Bodie to hear but it seemed like they were arguing.  He darted his eyes towards the hostel, thoughts immediately on his partner.  Doyle could take care of himself, but if he had done so, there would be some evidence of it - lights for example, noise and shouting, bodies flying out of the windows, the normal sort of activity associated with Doyle’s temper.  But the hostel remained quiet and Bodie knew full well that a silencer wouldn’t be heard at all. 

Then again, the man could have just been looking for a place to have a piss for all he knew.

The two men moved off and Bodie got out of the car, torn between following them and checking on Doyle.   There was no reason to suspect that his partner had been sussed, and all seemed quiet, despite Doyle’s penchant for attracting trouble, so he turned to shadow the two men, keeping a discreet distance.  They walked swiftly, silent now, turning two corners before getting into a car.  Bodie frowned in annoyance, but dutifully memorised the plates before turning back, suddenly anxious to check on his partner. 

Like a wraith he moved through the small gate to the front doors, digging in his pockets for his lock picks and pencil torch.  If he blew Doyle’s cover, Cowley would give him hell, but he’d just check, quietly, that his partner was alright. 

The ledger on the reception desk showed him that Doyle had been given room 9 on the 6th floor and Bodie smirked to himself.  The stairs were to his left and he very quietly moved towards them, freezing as his foot came down on the fifth, the resultant squeak seeming as loud as a bomb blast.  But nothing moved and Bodie cautiously continued upwards.  Room 9 was in a corridor as deserted as the rest of the building, and Bodie hesitated, knowing his partner’s abilities.  He eased the door open, cautious of hinges that may need oiling.   Light from the street lamp outside the window gave his dilated eyes a clear view of the bed and its occupants.  Bodie blinked.  Occupants?  The untidy head of his partner was there all right, eyes closed, mouth faintly curling as though about to smile.  But Doyle wasn’t alone.  On either side of him, snuggled up tight, was a blonde head and Bodie recognised the two Scandinavian girls from earlier in the day. 

He glared at his oblivious partner, before closing the door, torn between admiration and exasperation.  Here he was, worried that perhaps the furtive man in the street had done Doyle some harm and his partner was snuggled up with a couple of birds, as unconcerned as you please.  And anyway, why hadn’t Doyle woken up?  Dangerous that, sleeping through an intruder.  Grumbling he made his way back to the stairs.

Behind the closed door, one alert greenish blue eye opened and one hand left the handle of the knife under the pillow and settled with proprietary ownership on the smooth shoulder of the girl on his right.  Doyle smiled to himself and drifted off to sleep.

 

***

 

 

The pub was crowded, full of young travellers from the hostel, the chatter loud with as many different conversations as there were languages.  Bodie sat at the bar, with a clear view of the door, nursing a beer.  Doyle was late and remembering the two young Nordic women, he scowled heavily, swearing that if Doyle was in bed with them and forgetting his job, Bodie would let him hitchhike back to London. 

The door opened and he looked up automatically, expecting his partner, prepared for the excuse Doyle would have for being late. It wasn’t Doyle though; it was a young woman, plumpish with a very pretty face and fair hair.  Another backpacker.  He turned back to his beer as she made her way to the bar and heard a definite German accent as she asked for a lager.  Half his attention on her and half on the door waiting for Doyle, he was surprised to hear a low voiced greeting in unmistakable Russian from his other side and turned his head swiftly. 

The man, young, athletic with a nose that had once been broken, was conversing in low tones with a tall, fair fellow beside him.  He didn’t recognise either, but that didn’t mean anything.  The KGB had an endless supply of agents.

“It is surprising that they come here for a holiday,” said a voice in his left ear and Bodie jerked his head back quickly.  The blond haired girl had parked herself on the bar stool next to him and was appraising him candidly.  “You would think they would go to the tropics, find somewhere warm.  But no, they come here chasing the loch monster.”

Bodie’s brow lifted in surprise.  “You speak Russian?” he asked guardedly.

She smiled at him, amused.  “Yes, my grandmother is Russian.”

Bodie instantly switched on the charm.  “Really?  And….er… you were saying they are on holiday?  Here in Scotland.”

Grey blue eyes peered over his shoulder to the men in question.  “Yes, they look for adventure.”  She laughed abruptly.  “They are not happy with the monster which did not show.  They are not happy with these Scottish people either, who seem not to like Russians.  They also do not like the beer.”

Her attention then switched to him, intelligent eyes scanning him minutely.  “And why does an English man come to Scotland.  I hear the Scots do not like the English either.”

“Work,” he said smoothly, wanting to get her back to the Russians.  “Perhaps I should buy them vodka?”

She smiled at him, “Perhaps you should buy me one.”

“But you haven’t lost a monster,” Bodie pointed out.  “They must be devastated.”

“More fool them for looking for him.” She said dismissively and Bodie had to grin, agreeing with her.

“So the Loch Ness locals gave them a hard time?” he prodded, trying to get her back on track.

“They were also treated like spies in some smaller villages.” She said obligingly and Bodie smiled warmly at her. 

Behind her, the door opened and Doyle came in, rucksack over his shoulder, looking the part without effort.  A casual glance around saw him with the girl and raising an amused brow, he moved unhurriedly off to the gents.  Bodie excused himself from the sharp eyes of his companion and headed in the same direction.

Doyle had already checked the stalls, ensuring the facilities were empty and was waiting impatiently.   “I’ll miss my train,” he said pointedly as Bodie leaned against the door, preventing anyone from coming in.

“Then you should have had an earlier night and not slept in, shouldn’t you.” Bodie retorted.

One corner of Doyle’s lips lifted, trying to suppress a smile and his eyes sparkled.  “Well, I was very tired you know.”

“I know, I saw, you randy toad.  You were supposed to be checking the place out, not indulging in a ménage a trios.” 

Doyle spread his hands out depreciatingly.  ”Can’t help it if I’m irresistible now, can I?”

Bodie rolled his eyes.  “Did you find out anything useful?”

“No,” his partner snorted derisively and checked his watch, “I’ve got to rush, here are the names of the guests for the nights Petrov stayed there, you can give them to Cowley when you next check in.  And according to Sheila, the receptionist, a Russian came in a couple of days ago.  Was looking for a mate, she said.  From months ago.”

“KGB?”

“Well how would we know?  He didn’t stay so he didn’t give his name.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing,” Doyle confirmed. “This is like looking for the proverbial needle.”

“Well there may be someone else looking for your needle.”  Bodie outlined the men he had followed the night before.  “Did you happen to notice anyone creeping around in there?  Besides yourself that is?”

“In a youth hostel?   Come on Bodie, the loo was at the end of the corridor, people were creeping about all night.” Doyle straightened his jacket and secured his scarf.  “Not to mention rats in certain rooms.”

“What?”

“The girls,” Doyle laughed at him.  “They had a rat in their room.  Wouldn’t sleep there.  What else could I do?”

Bodie stared at him, then shook his head.  “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.”  Doyle, still smiling picked up his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder, adjusting the weight evenly.

“How are you at a Russian accent?” Bodie asked suddenly, thinking of the young disillusioned Nessie seekers.

“You what?”

“Seems, the Scots don’t like Russians and they are getting a cold reception.”

“No,” Doyle feigned caustic surprise, “and they’re such a hospitable country and all.”

“Might make more sense for you to be as Russian as him, to find out what happened,” Bodie pressed and watched as Doyle mulled it over.

“Could give it a go, I suppose.”

“That’s the ticket... tovarishch.  See you in Oban.”

Doyle waved over his shoulder and exited the gents. 

 

***

 

**Chapter 4**

 

Sergeant McIver looked at Bodie from under ferocious thick eyebrows and pursed his lips.  “The ferry goes twice a week, drops off mail and supplies if there are any.  Ye can get a lift with it, if ye’ve a mind.  There is a pub that lets rooms out, more occupied in the summer though.”

“Is it a popular tourist destination?” Bodie asked, adopting a friendly persona for his cover as an Ordnance surveyor. 

It had been an easy drive up from Glasgow, the weather was surprisingly mild for late April, and he had spent the morning strolling through Oban, enjoying the warm sunshine before locating the police station as per Cowley’s instructions, ostensibly to glean what information he could about the island and its inhabitants.  Cowley had provided the perfect excuse, a letter on Ordnance letterhead, asking for the cooperation of the local authorities in identifying possible hazards in accomplishing his work. 

The station was small and shabby, the police seemed friendly enough, yet he had a sense of something being withheld.  Bodie suddenly wished Doyle were with him, sure the ex copper would have picked up on it straight away.

“Tourist?  Och no man, there’s nothing there, but dirt and rocks and unfriendly locals.  They isna what ye’d call welcoming.  Keep to themselves.”

“Oh? Thought they’d rely on the tourist trade for a living.”  Bodie was surprised at this, what else would there be on such a small island.

“They do a bit of crofting, some sheep and in the summer sell handcrafts to tourists on the quay.”  McIver made a face.  “All right for some.  Most visitor’s dinna bother staying, the ones that do say they are looking for peace and quiet, but they are quick enough to leave on the next ferry.”  He glanced at the letter in his hand.  “I canna say that there is anything particularly to watch out for on the island, except that the north cliffs are dangerous, there’s been more than one tourist fall off and get killed.  Creates a backlog of paperwork, let me tell you, especially if they happen to be from overseas.”

“And they have?” Bodie prompted carefully.

“Aye.  The locals say they lose their way in the sea mist and fall off.  Tis bad this time of year.”

“Nasty,” Bodie murmured, all sympathy.

“And their bodies never recovered,” McIver went on morbidly.  “So mind yeself while working there Mr Bodie.”

Was it really that simple, Bodie wondered as he stepped back out into the weak sunshine.  Rambling around dangerous cliff edges, a fog comes down, lose your footing and fall to your death?  He pursed his lips thoughtfully and made for the quay.    Then, if that is the fate that befell Petrov, why did the island inhabitants deny all knowledge of him?  If not for Interpol’s surveillance, no one would ever know that Petrov had visited the island at all and yet someone there must have seen him, a stranger in a small community.  What ulterior motive would they have for blatantly lying to the authorities?

Bodie squinted out over the water to the dark blue hump of Mull, set against a grey forbidding sea, trying to deduce the possible reasons for Petrov’s actions.  There were other boats besides the MacBrayne Ferries and the one or two independent services that visited the islands.  Trawlers, pleasure craft, even some yachts.  Plenty of vessels for Petrov to return from the island, if he was disinclined to wait for the ferry.  Provided, of course that he had pre arranged for them to collect him.  And if he hadn’t, then he was possibly still on the island somewhere.

The large Caledonian MacBrayne ferries called at the island briefly on an early morning Saturday run from Lewis to Oban.  There was only one other ferry that called at the island on a regular basis and that was midweek.  With a bit of luck he and Doyle will have checked out the island, located Petrov and be finished with this assignment by Saturday.

 

***

 

 

George Cowley was going over some information provided by M16, when Betty buzzed his intercom.

“Yes, what is it?”

“3.7, sir, checking in.”

“Aye, patch him through.”

He waited until he heard the distinct click before identifying himself.  “Cowley.  Any news?”

Bodie dutifully brought his chief up to date and recited the names Doyle had taken from the register in the Youth Hostel in Glasgow and the licence plate of the men he had followed during the night.

“What did you make of them?”  Cowley was intrigued.

“Hard to say sir, might have just been caught short for all I know.  It just seemed odd at the time.  4.5 didn’t hear anything inside at any rate,” Cowley then heard a muttered, “Not with his ears full of Nordic kisses, that is.”

“Eh?”

“Er..nothing sir.  I’m in Oban now, 4.5 is due in on the afternoon train and we’ll get the ferry tomorrow to this island.  But I don’t like our chances, they’re a closed mouth lot up here.”

“Och Bodie, you just aren’t using the right technique.”  Cowley was amused.  “The Scots are one of the most generous, friendly people on earth.”

“If you say so, sir,” came the highly doubtful reply.

“Have you seen anything of Zelenko?”

“Not a dicky bird, but there _will_ be a Russian on that island on Saturday.”  He quickly outlined their plan to have Doyle switch nationalities. 

Cowley listened with approval, confident that Doyle’s natural affinity with accents would hold up the charade convincingly.  He smiled suddenly, remembering a time he hadn’t been so assured.  When he’d first taken on Doyle, he’d been dubious about the man’s ability to successfully go undercover, Doyle’s curls and damaged cheekbone being as distinctive as they were.  But the agent had proved remarkably adept at changing personas, managing to absorb his cover to the point where it was wholly believable and rarely questioned.  And as Doyle himself had pointed out... most of their dealings were with people whose violent backgrounds had left them with far more disfiguring facial injuries than himself.  Cowley had been forced to agree.  

“I won’t be able to check in again until Saturday sir,” Bodie was speaking again, “According to the local police, the island doesn’t have any phones, they use a two way radio in emergencies.  And anyway I expect we’ll know by then whether he’s there or not.”

“Aye, well I’ll hear from you then, oh and Bodie, keep a sharp eye out.  Something about this is bothering me.  It’s almost like we are being played and I’m not sure why.”

“Roger, 3.7 out.”

Bodie hung up and George Cowley stared at the phone for a minute.  Then he buzzed his secretary.  “Betty, get me the Russian ambassador.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cowley smiled and sat back, highly pleased at the turn of events.

 

***

 

Doyle dutifully arrived on the afternoon train to be greeted by an overcast and drizzly sky.   Bodie had parked unobtrusively near the station to wait for him.  He watched as his partner shouldered his rucksack and set off across the car park with the rest of the passengers.  Bodie studied them but no one stood out, no one looked like Zelenko and no one acted suspiciously.   Not for the first time, Bodie wondered what the old man thought they would find out here, and then wondered why he bothered wondering.  His boss’s capacity for triple think was legendary but Bodie couldn’t help thinking that this time he may come up empty handed...whatever his game was.

Doyle would try to find a room before checking the ferry timetables.  Bodie, having already looked knew that the services operated according to population and size of the islands, no doubt in a competitive attempt to guarantee a fare.  The size of _Eilean Rutha_ made a twice weekly ferry service a miracle in itself.  What could have possessed young Petrov to aim for this particular island?

He started the car and slowly followed the walking passengers.  Doyle gave no sign that he was aware of being followed, but Bodie knew he was.  His partner possessed an uncanny radar for tails and Bodie had learned more than once to trust it.

The waterfront had a selection of hotels covering a variety of class requirements.  Keeping to his cover, Doyle walked past the more affluent looking accommodation and instead stopped outside a smaller guesthouse, badly in need of paint and maintenance.  He disappeared inside and Bodie carried on to his own, slightly more upmarket hotel.  He did not see Doyle for the rest of that day, but knowing his partner like he did, guessed that he had climbed to the hill overlooking Oban.  A folly had been built there at some time in the past and it was a perfect spot to take in the view and Doyle would have wanted to stretch his legs, after the enforced inactivity of the train. 

 

***

 

The _Maighdean-mhara_ was an unlovely boat, serviceable and - he hoped - seaworthy, but whatever streamline design she had originally been given was now swamped with a myriad of alterations to enable her to carry her full quota of people and cargo.  The deckhand grudgingly helped Bodie load his equipment, the tripod, a theodolite and a bag of relevant equipment, which also secreted his gun and authority.   Bodie had no idea how to actually use the equipment he’d been given as part of his cover, but it was almost certain no one else would either.  So long as he looked like he knew what he was doing, he shouldn’t attract too much attention.  He settled down just inside the cabin near a window and studiously took out a file of geographical information, pretending to be absorbed in it, although he had half an eye on the gangplank, wondering where his errant partner had got to. 

The whistle blew making him start slightly and his head whipped up, disconcerted to see that Doyle had not boarded.  Then he saw him, a lean denimed figure flying down the wharf to the gangplank, rucksack swinging wildly in one hand.  Bodie smiled and dropped his eyes back to his figures, without really seeing them. 

The deckhand admonished his tardiness with an irritable _tcha_ as Doyle leapt aboard, catching his breath.

“Is very sorry,” he apologised, in a fair imitation of a Russian accent. “I got lost.”

Bodie’s smile grew.  He didn’t know whether Doyle had a natural talent for accents, or whether something in his police background had tutored him, but he wasn’t bad.  And convincing too, judging by the scowl and narrowed eyes of the deckhand, indicative of the mistrust these people had for foreigners.

The ferry pulled away from the quay and Bodie immediately forgot his paperwork as the vessel churned through green water, a slight roll beginning as she met the incoming swells.  The sea air wafted into the cabin and his spirits soared immediately, reminded of his dim past.  The better part anyway, when he was still fresh and young enough to be lured by the ocean and he breathed deeply in satisfaction, retrieving a verse from his considerable mental collection, _I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by._  

The slow passage down past Mull was uneventful.  Doyle lounged in the bow, studying the island with a tourist’s fascination and Bodie turned pages while watching the sea birds wheel and dive.  The other passengers were mostly tourists, the majority seemingly from England, but he caught a couple of American accents as well - the majority, judging by the small amount of conversation, bound for Lewis.  The timetable had their island fifth on the list of stops and Bodie settled down to enjoy the trip. 

 

When the small smudge appeared on the horizon, Bodie put away his papers and wandered up to the small counter where he purchased a pie and a coke.  Doyle had abandoned the bow, not surprising given the temperature and was now leaning against the leeward side of the boat, out of the cold wind.  He took his lunch and wandered out to stand near his partner.  The strong breeze eddied around their shelter, stirring Doyle’s curls and he hunched into his scarf glancing at Bodie’s meal with a disapprovingly raised eyebrow.  Bodie ignored the censure.

“Bit cool?” He said by way of greeting. 

It was unlikely they’d be overheard but he decided not to take chances.  Doyle apparently thought the same as he merely nodded and said.  “Not so cold as my country.”

“I bet.” Bodie took another healthy bite and leaned against a rust flecked pole.  “Not exactly a holiday place either.”

Doyle looked thoughtful, but he played along.  “Some people like the solitude.”

“This island coming up, Eilean Rutha,” Bodie stumbled slightly on the Gaelic name.  “Apparently it’s subject to sea mists, according to the local plods.  People lose their way and fall off the cliffs.”

Doyle’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer. 

“Not too friendly either, the locals.” Bodie warned softly and was satisfied when Doyle gave a brief nod.

Both turned to watch as the island grew bigger, emerging from the sea like a surfacing submarine.  It looked tilted, the north side rising to a point with jagged cliffs and covered in surprisingly dense forest, predominantly pine judging by the greenery this early in the year.  The rest of the island sloped down into the barren grassland more indicative of the Hebrides and eventually, protectively hugging a small harbour, a small village appeared, wisps of grey smoke from various chimneys’ matching the dreary colours of the haphazardly placed cottages.  He could see white dots on the sloping lower land, sheep, and an aged and rusting boat in the harbour but the village was strangely deserted.  He turned to get his equipment as the boat gently motored inside the protective causeway and bumped against a worn grey wharf.  Doyle was across immediately, shouldering his rucksack and turning toward the buildings with a resigned manner.  Bodie followed more slowly, making sure he had everything. 

The deckhand assisted him again, piling his equipment on the quay.  He hesitated before reboarding the boat as though he wanted to say something.  Bodie waited, trying to appear open, approachable.  But the man finally shrugged and said.  “Watch yeself _Sassenach_ , things are no what they seem here, ye ken.”

Before Bodie could question his meaning, he was back aboard, efficiently retrieving the gangplank and stowing it securely. Bodie stood as the ferry pulled away watching until it rounded the stone breakwater, buffeting against the oncoming swells and tried to quell the uneasy feeling the departing boat had evoked. 

Bodie shook his head.  This was some assignment the old man had sent them on.  And that was saying something, considering the nature of most of their work.  Stuck on a isolated island, following a year old trail with nothing really to go on and he had a sudden sympathy for his partner - Doyle’s impatient nature would be hard pressed to ride out this one and he had a feeling Petrov’s disappearance wasn’t going to be resolved easily.

He turned to take in his surroundings. The street meandered up from the wharf, cobbled and bleak, even the late afternoon sun unable to warm the cold grey stone. 

“Inviting sort of place,” he muttered and picked up his gear.  He followed Doyle who had made a beeline for the only noticeable pub in sight, the faded lettering on the sign outside barely legible.   _Am Fear Uaine_.   Bodie stared at the word _Fear_.  He knew it probably didn’t have the same meaning as the English translation but still wondered what bright spark had decided to include it in a sign primarily for welcoming people to its establishment.  The old writing was superimposed over the silhouette of a man, now a faded green. 

Swinging open the doors he was immediately assaulted by the smell of burning peat and spilt beer, overlaid with the pleasant aromas of food and he stood blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dim interior.  There was a small group of men huddled at the far end of the bar and Bodie paused as hostile eyes shifted from their perusal of his partner, to himself.  Bodie fancied that he could have heard a pin drop in the suddenly charged atmosphere and he had a sudden impression of being very unwelcome.  He dumped his gear by the door and wandered over to the counter where Doyle had begun to haltingly convey to the young barmaid that he wanted a room.  Bodie felt the unwelcome atmosphere abruptly change with the first Russian accented words; charged, electric, it rippled through the men propping up the bar as though something miraculous had happened.  The sole exception to the sudden cessation of hostility was the barmaid herself.

She was pretty enough, long curling golden hair kept in place by a thin ribbon, wide blue eyes in a heart shaped face.  Her expression was interesting, he noted, a peculiar mixture of fear and trepidation as she darted her eyes from Doyle to himself and back again.

“I think he wants a room,” he said to her gently.  “And so do I.”

“Ye want a room?  Here?”  Her disbelief was as obvious as her reluctance to give them one.

“Tis clear enough, Isla,” a voice put in, and another woman appeared from a room behind the bar.  She was older than Isla, and wore her faded blond hair in two plaits framing eyes that were sharp and unfriendly, although her mouth smiled at them both.  “Four and six are free.  Fetch some clean linen.”

“Aye Morag,” the girl threw a final anguished look at Doyle before escaping.

Morag folded her arms across her ample bosom and leaned on the counter.  She looked calculatingly at them both and her attention came back to Doyle.  “Eastern European are ye?”

“I am Russian,” Doyle drew himself up and Bodie, with a small grin, was strongly reminded of Grigor Yashinkov’s henchmen.  So his partner hadn’t been quite as bored as he had looked during Cowley’s meetings with the Russian.

“Aye?”  Surprisingly, Morag’s manner seemed to defrost somewhat.  “And travelling alone are ye?”

“Yes,” Doyle confirmed.  “I wish to explore this island and then Lewis and Harris.  My cousin did this.”

“Is that right?  Well, Isla will get you comfortable, Mr...?”

For a split second Doyle faltered, his face blank and Bodie realised that they hadn’t thought up a proper identity for him.

“Dimitri,” Doyle recovered quickly and Bodie added, ”Don’t ask for the rest, it’s quite unpronounceable.”  He smiled at the woman.  “We met on the ferry.”

Morag darted her sharp eyes between the two of them, eventually apportioning the hesitation to difficulties with the language.   “And are you on holiday as well, Mr...?”

“Bodie,” he said smoothly.  “No, I work with Ordnance.  There seems to be some discrepancy with our records and I’m here to do a bit of surveying.”

Her face, not all that friendly in the first place closed up, the smile disappearing.   “How long will that take?

“I’m not sure,” Bodie said pleasantly, taking an instant dislike to the woman.  “As long as it takes.  But for now I would like to freshen up and perhaps order a meal.  I suspect Dimitri here would like the same.”

“The evening meal is at seven,” the woman snapped, her earlier hostility resurfacing. “Payment up front.”

She made no move to reach for any sort of ledger or guest record, which Bodie thought was rather odd.  He waited while Doyle made a show of retrieving his money from his rucksack, muttering to himself in a fair mixture of the few Russian words they had both picked up over the years.  The interest from the bar hadn’t lessened and glancing across, he counted six men, two dark haired, the rest blond or red haired, aged between early thirties and mid forties.  Bodie recalled some half remembered information he had picked up from somewhere about the islands having a high percentage of Nordic features, thanks to their violent Norsemen forefathers, who had pillaged and raped and farmed their way down the coast of Britain centuries before.  It would certainly account for the predominant fair colouring on display.

Isla returned, just as he was paying, to show them to their rooms.  Morag spoke to her briefly in what Bodie dimly recognised as Gaelic and she stiffened slightly, throwing a swift terrified look Doyle’s way.  Bodie exchanged a quick glance with his partner.  Doyle raised a confirming brow, agreeing that the incomprehensible exchange somehow involved him.

He picked up his gear and followed Isla through the door at the end of the bar and down a corridor.  The walls were whitewashed, the floor laid with stone and it was chilly.  Bodie hunched into his coat, watched Doyle wrap his scarf more firmly around his neck, although the girl didn’t react to the frigid air.  She seemed on edge, hands fluttering nervously at the pendant around her neck and her eyes kept straying to Doyle who returned her frantic looks curiously.  Bodie waited as she opened the old oak door of number four with a big old fashioned black key and then went to step past her, but she stopped him.

“No, this is Mr Dimitri’s room.”

“Is ok,” Doyle told her placatingly. “I take next room.”

“No, no.  Morag says ye are to have this one. Ye must have this room.”  Her voice rose, panicking and Bodie again felt that unease skittering down his spine.  His eyes flashed a warning to his partner, which Doyle typically ignored, instead smiling at the girl as he unhesitatingly went to step past her, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.  “Are ye really Russian?”

He nodded, disturbed by her distress as she let her hand drop with something very close to despair.

“You are ok?”  He asked her gently. 

“Aye, aye I am fine.”  She went back to fiddling with her pendant as Doyle with a half glance at Bodie entered his room.  Bodie slid a surreptitious glance in as well, but could see nothing out of the ordinary.  A single bed, a window, a small dressing table and a two door wardrobe, nothing to warrant the insistence that Doyle have this room.  Then again, in light of Doyle’s welcome, as opposed to his own, perhaps his room was infested with fleas.

“The bathroom is at the end of the hall,” she told them as Doyle placed his rucksack on the bed and nodded absently. 

The girl closed the door and led Bodie to number six.  

“You don’t like Russians?”  Bodie asked, intrigued by her behaviour.

“I dinna dislike them,” she opened the door, swinging it wide.  “They are people, same as you and I.”

To his relief, his room looked the same as number four.  Bodie dumped his bags by the window, pulling open the dark curtains to admit natural light.  He could see the harbour, saw the faint smudge of the distant coastline that was the mainland and saw a trawler beating against the wind, so that it rose and fell, spray engulfing the bow.

The room was basic but functional, painted a stark white, with dark wooden beams across the ceiling.  The bed was solid, with brass railings, covered in white linen.  He could see no obvious difference to Doyle’s which made the insistence that his partner take number four all the more baffling.   The only decoration was a plaited circlet of twigs and dried leaves above his bed.   He couldn’t identify the foliage used, but for some reason it enhanced his uneasiness.  In fact the whole place made him uneasy and he wondered if Doyle, who was a master at gut instincts, felt the same way.

 

***

 

The man sat cross legged on a mat, staring into the flames of a dozen candles spread out on the floor in front of him in a meticulously set pattern.   Eyes reflecting the tiny points of light, did not lift at the tentative knock at the door, did not break their study of the candles until the draft from the opening door set the flames to wavering and sputtering.

The woman stood in the doorway, her two plaits shining silver, her faded blue eyes intent on him, mouth smiling triumphantly. 

“We have a visitor, come on the ferry.  Russian he says.”

“Is he?”  The man’s voice was deep, resonant, hypnotising.  “He is alone?”

“Aye.  He travels alone.  I have given him room four.”

The man smiled.  “Fortuitous indeed.”

“There is a problem.”  Morag was hesitant now, looking at him warily.

He waited, staring at the flames.

“Another man was also on the ferry.  He is from Ordnance, come to do some surveying, he says.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed the serene face.  “Then he must be discouraged from staying, mustn’t he?”

“Aye, “ she waited until the eyes lifted to her again.  “The young Russian?  The festival?”

“I think Isabel will do an admirable job.  Inform her of her duty and alert my children.”

The door closed and the black eyes returned to their contemplation of the candles.

 

***

 

 

He had time for a bath - there was no shower- getting there ahead of Doyle in case the hot water system was as ancient as the walls surrounding it and then dressed warmly for their meal, hoping that it was half way decent.

The hovering aroma eased his apprehensive stomach as he travelled the corridor to the taproom.  Pushing open the door, he was astonished to find it nearly full, young men and women, standing about in groups, drinking and talking animatedly.  As had happened that afternoon, a hush descended on the room as he entered.

“Good evening,” Bodie smiled around the room, pretending not to notice the staring faces, although his eyes took them all in regardless, surprised at the number of young people present.  He’d have thought a remote island like this would have a more aged population, a generation holding on to what they’d always known, resistant to change, not this crowd of young adults all staring at him in the unfriendly manner he was resignedly getting used to.

Approaching the bar, where the dour Morag was on duty, he noticed there was no sign of Isla.  Morag looked up, and smiled, although again, it did not reach her eyes.

“ A pint,” Bodie told her and then sniffed hopefully.  “You said evening meals were at seven?”

“Aye, lamb, potatoes, carrots, there’s potato and leek soup, and treacle tart for afters.”

“Sounds good,” Bodie rubbed his hands together, “It’s cold tonight.”

“The weather is not good at this time of the year.” Morag told him as she drew the beer, expertly trimming the froth at the top.  “Surely your work would be better done in summer.”

“No doubt,” Bodie agreed, “But I have somewhere else to be in summer, and my boss is anxious to get this done.”

“What do you need to do?”

Bodie hadn’t a clue, but then, he guessed, neither did she.  “Oh just take some photographs, a few measurements and write down the corrections.  The highest point of the island would be the best.”

It flickered very quickly across her face, although she quickly squashed it.  A slight glimmer of alarm.  “The high cliffs of the island are unstable and dangerous and subject to unexpected sea fogs at this time of year,” she told him determinedly.  “Mr Bodie, you would be much wiser to return towards the end of summer.”

Bodie nodded.  “And I’ve already said, that’s impossible.  Don’t concern yourself about me, love, I’ve done some mountaineering in my time and I’m well trained.”

He took his pint and wandered over to a table by the window, pleased with that exchange.  It seemed that Morag didn’t want him here.  He wondered who else didn’t.  As he sat, watching the darkening sky, the door opened and Doyle appeared hair damp from his own bath, dressed in clean jeans and a heavy grey knit shirt, feeling the cold no doubt - not enough meat on his bones. 

His welcome was a marked difference to Bodie’s own, Morag smiled at him and served him without resentment, asking whether his room was satisfactory and did he have enough blankets.   While she poured his beer, Doyle looked around at the clientele of the pub, many of whom were staring at him with varying degrees of curiosity.  Morag called out something in Gaelic and Bodie nearly groaned.  Eavesdropping wasn’t going to be very helpful if they constantly spoke a different language and he and Doyle did not.

“I sit with him,” Doyle told the woman, gesturing Bodie’s way with his freshly pulled pint. Bodie saw the woman’s eyes flick to him malevolently, before she disappeared into the back room, hopefully to start the food.

Doyle pulled up a chair and nodded at him.  Bodie raised a brow and said in a very low voice.  “Gaelic!  The old man should have come himself, I’ll bet you a fiver he’s fluent.”

Doyle shot him an impatient glance, before looking around cautiously for anyone taking an interest in them.  Apart from occasional glances, no one was. 

“A whole fiver?  You must be sure of yourself,” he kept the accent in place and his voice low.  “How is your room?”

“No different to yours,” Bodie admitted.  “Why all the fuss about which room you were given, it’s not as if she wrote in down in a ledger or anything for a fire warden to check.”

Doyle leaned back thoughtfully.  “It’s odd.  The whole place is odd.”

Bodie was fervently glad his partner had felt the same eerie vibes as he had.  Feeling slightly less paranoid at the admission he sniffed with disdain, “Well, they are Scottish.” 

New arrivals sat at a nearby table and so they made small talk until the meal arrived.  A young woman brought the meal, blond hair loose around her face, blue eyes checking them both out.  She placed the soup bowls in front of them and smiled very invitingly at Doyle before returning to the kitchen, hips swaying nicely under her long skirt.

“Friendly,” Doyle observed, picking up his spoon.

“To you maybe,” Bodie said softly.  “They don’t want me here.”

Doyle looked at him quizzically and replied just as softly. “Thought you said it was the Russians that were unwelcome?”

“Yeah.  Odd eh?  Perhaps your long lost cousin encountered the same reception.”

Doyle smiled briefly.  “You think he is still here?”

Bodie shrugged and applied himself to the soup, which against his expectations was quite tasty.  “He has to be somewhere and like you said, there is something odd about the place.” 

When the meal was finished and cleared away, they ordered another drink and leaned back to observe the pub’s patrons, again noting the considerable number of young men and women, late teens, early twenties.  Bodie wondered where they worked, wondered at the high percentage of young people on such a remote island, in an age where cinemas and discos lured the young to the cities.

Someone had taken up a bodhran and the young girl who had brought them their meal began to dance, inviting one man after another to take part, which they did willingly.  She cast her smiling face back to Doyle and eventually made her way over to entice him to join her.  Bodie glanced at him and was surprised to see him frowning.  He looked back at the young woman wondering what it was his partner had seen and disapproved of.  She was pretty, her figure pleasing, she was clearly interested in Doyle.  He could see no obvious problem.

But still they were here to do a job and so Doyle got to his feet and joined the girl, moving easily, his natural grace evident as he quickly picked up the steps.  As though it was a prearranged sign others got to their feet and in no time the place was dancing up a storm.  Bodie was left virtually ignored.  He didn’t take it personally, recognising it as just another ploy to make him feel unwelcome.  _So lucky you have thick skin, old son_ , he told himself and sat back in some amusement to watch the revellers.  Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned around to see the girl, Isla.  She watched Doyle anxiously before becoming aware of Bodie’s attention.  Flushing she ducked away, but Bodie was instantly on his feet after her.

He caught up with her by the kitchen door.  “Are you all right Isla?” he asked kindly, seeing her distress.  She nodded like an automaton, but he persisted.  “You don’t look it.  Does Dimitri frighten you?”

Her eyes jerked up at this and she shook her head in horror.  “No, nay, he doesna frighten me.  But...” her eyes pleaded with him.  “I fear for him.”

“Fear for him?” Bodie repeated calmly.  “Why Isla?  Are Russians so disliked here?”

“Aye, the cold war ye ken.”  She looked miserably at her feet.   “Soren tells us of their communism; how they want to invade the world, make everyone the same as them.”

“Soren?”

“Aye, the druid.” 

Druid?  What was she on about?  He began to wonder if the girl was delusional.  She certainly seemed highly strung, anxiety driving her fingers to fiddle with her necklace, her feet to shuffle nervously on the stone floor. 

She looked up suddenly.  “But they canna all be like that Mr Bodie, I mean they must have bairns as well, they must have hopes and dreams and desires, just like us.”

Bodie stared at her.  Something in the way she said that spoke of familiarity.  She looked stricken and frightened and sad.  He reached for her and took her gently by the shoulders.  “I’m sure they do.  Dimitri seems a normal enough bloke.  Why would this Soren say such a thing?  Are there other Russians here?”

She stared at him, eyes wide and terrified, but before she could answer, a voice called her name and with a muttered apology, she opened the door and disappeared into the kitchen.

The unease that had plagued Bodie since stepping off the ferry intensified significantly, but he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly was bothering him.  _I fear for him_.  The fear had been genuine, she _did_ fear for Doyle. Why?  Bodie’s unease switched abruptly to his partner and his exasperating habit of finding trouble without even trying. 

Nicholai Petrov had disappeared off this island a year ago and had not been seen since.  He resolved to keep a very close eye on his inherently curious partner.  

***

 

**Chapter 5**

 

The warehouse on the Thames was dusty, disused and quite familiar.  Cowley stood waiting patiently, flanked by Lucas and McCabe and if he didn’t miss Bodie’s perpetual sniff as the dust penetrated his sinuses, he did miss the entertaining observations he and Doyle managed to exchange when they thought he wasn’t listening. 

Footsteps finally sounded, loud and echoing as three men moved from the stairwell.  Behind him Lucas and McCabe straightened up to flank him, facing their opponents like contestants in a boxing ring.

“Hello tovarishch.” Grigor Yashinkov stated formally as he came to a stop.

“Hello comrade.”  Cowley eyed his opponent sternly.

“Have you found him, tovarishch?”

“Not yet, but I have received a report that there is a Russian on a small island off the coast of Scotland.  I have reason to believe he is hiding there, sheltered by the inhabitants.  I’ll be sending my lads up to fetch him.”

“I congratulate you,” Yashinkov stated mildly.  “But then your organisation is exemplary.  If anyone could find him, CI5 could.”

“Indeed.”  Cowley tilted his head.  “But then you knew I would, didn’t you, once I knew Zelenko was in the country looking for him?  That’s why you told me.”

Yashinkov inclined his head in acknowledgement.  “The ambassador requires the boy returned unharmed to his grandparents.  This is your country, who better to find him.”

Cowley glared at him.  “Where is Zelenko now?”

The Russian wasn’t to be fooled so easily.  He spread his hands out in conciliatory gesture.  “I do not know, tovarishch, but he is one of our best.  I would think he has not given up, nor do I expect him to fall into your clutches.”

Cowley abruptly changed track.  “A car was spotted in Glasgow recently, it had been hired at Gatwick by two Russian tourists, Mikhail Ustinova and Demid Obruchev.  What were they doing in Glasgow?”

“Looking for the Loch Ness monster, perhaps.”  Yashinkov was wary now.

“Trust, you once said comrade.  The KGB do not trust their own.  You don’t think Zelenko will find young Petrov?”

“Let us say that we would like our agents to do more constructive work, than to find lost boys.”

Cowley smiled without humour. “And no matter who finds him, Zelenko will then return home.”

“That is the general idea.  Are we done now?”

Cowley nodded shortly.  McCabe and Lucas stepped forward and the two Russian henchmen copied their moves.  They shook hands warily. 

“Liverpool for the cup.” The Russian henchman opposite McCabe said in such heavily accented vowels, he was almost incomprehensible.

“Not bloody likely mate,” McCabe retorted, indignantly.  “Arsenal will beat them hands down.”

The puzzled look was ignored as McCabe stepped back.   The Russians turned and made their way out, past the dust and rubble.

“Beg pardon, sir?”  Lucas ventured cautiously.  “But I thought you wanted Petrov?  You’ve told Yashinkov where to find him.”

Cowley smiled as he watched the retreating men disappear down the stairwell.  “You can kill two birds with one stone, Lucas.”  He gestured to his men and they departed the same way.  “If you are crafty enough.”

 

***

 

 

The music was still playing and people were still dancing.  Alcohol flowed freely and Bodie detected the faint but unmistakable odour of cannabis, although with the press of bodies, it was hard to say where it was coming from.  He shot a quick wary glance at Doyle, knowing too well his partner’s dislike of all drugs but Doyle was behaving himself, studiously ignoring the telltale aroma.  The blond bird was showing him some sort of complicated footwork to go with a dance they were sharing with another couple and obviously he had decided his cover was more important. 

A newcomer had arrived while Bodie was absent and now stood at the bar watching the dancers with dark glittering eyes.   A tall man, with overlong grey hair and a short matching beard, wearing old jeans and an embroidered shirt embellished with a string of jet beads around his neck.  Bodie eyed both the shirt and the beads with a faintly derisive sneer as he wandered over to the bar to order another drink.  The man had to be pushing 60 at least and despite his eccentric dress looked more like a lost undertaker, than Scottish islander.  The man paid no attention to his approach, his benign expression dreamily focussed on the dancers, radiating wholehearted approval.

Morag was further down the bar, pulling a pint for a large fair haired lad and Bodie waited patiently, eyes automatically cataloguing the bar, the people lining its length and the doorway, through which the young man called Duncan  appeared with a tray of glasses. 

A painting hanging in the corner of the bar caught his attention and he squinted to see it clearly in the dim light.  Bold brush strokes had produced an unlikely image from fantasy - the body of a powerfully built, entirely naked man, but instead of a human head, the figure sported the head of a deer, complete with a rack of impressive antlers.  Young women, in a similar state of undress clutched at his legs, arms beseechingly held out to his aloof disdain.  Coloured almost exclusively in muted shades of green, the painting was amateurishly done, even to Bodie’s inexperienced eyes and faintly repulsive, although he was sure that wasn’t the intention.    

“The Horned One,” the man beside him suddenly said and Bodie was astonished to hear a cultured English accent, the sort that shouted public school and old money.  It was so out of place on this windswept island that he glanced around, wondering if anyone else had heard this oddity.

“Or Cernunnos, if you like.  The God of nature, sexuality, hunting and fertility.”  The man went on, gazing up at the painting fondly.  “The old Celts believed in him - and his Goddess - and worshipped them accordingly.  Until Christianity came along, that is, and gave him the name of Lucifer in an attempt to stamp out this paganism and convert to the true religion.”

Bodie eyed him narrowly.  Religious nuts occasionally popped up in their line of work and were extremely unpredictable and this one, looking like a reject from a Lord of the Rings production triggered Bodie’s alarm bells immediately.  However, the man didn’t go off on a zealous sermon, he simply turned from the painting and said in a perfectly normal tone; “You are with Ordnance?”

“Yes,” he answered, belatedly remembering his cover.  “Bodie.”  He extended his hand which was taken without hesitation, the clasp firm and short. 

“Soren.”

Ah, the man Isla had spoken of.   The Druid.  Warning signals firing again, Bodie gave him a careful once over.  Thin, his facial structure sharp, black eyes deeply set, nose rather hawkish above a wide mouth. Apart from the anomaly of the voice and the hippy dress, he seemed quite ordinary; hardly what Bodie would envisage a Druid to look like -  not that he’d actually met any.  He’d seen them on the news though, invading Stonehenge and Glastonbury, all flowing white robes and long grey beards and generally appearing in desperate need of a bath. 

“We had no notification of your Department’s intention to send you here,” Soren said finally, his penetrating gaze having travelled over Bodie with the same thoroughness.

Bodie was amused.  “Well, I can’t see why they should.  I’m here to merely correct some abnormalities in our records, not to construct a theme park.”  He recalled Morag’s consternation.  “Why, is there a problem?”

The man smiled pleasantly enough.   “Not at all.  All are welcome to Eilean Rutha.”  

His eyes, gleaming darkly in the dim light flicked past Bodie, focussing on someone in the crowd with an intensity that was faintly alarming.  Bodie glanced over his shoulder and saw the object of his scrutiny, flushed and dishevelled, but laughing.  Bodie felt that disquiet again and he’d half wished he hadn’t suggested that his partner impersonate a Russian, it seemed to be affording him an abnormal amount of interest, although – as Doyle would scoffingly point out - that was precisely the point of course - to find Petrov.

“Glad to hear it,” he said to the man, “since I’m going to be here for a little while.”

“So I heard.  Correcting records for your office?  Interesting.”

Bodie was about to ask what Soren did on the island when Morag finally arrived at their end of the bar, looking at them both, enquiringly. 

“I think Morag, that we should have a small celebration with our two guests.”  Soren said in his smooth public school voice.  “Perhaps we can tap a barrel?”

“Of course.”  The look she gave the man was vastly different than anything Bodie had thus seen on her dour countenance.   He knew that look, ought to after all, being the recipient of so many of them.  Her eyes had softened, her mouth had smiled, her face transforming.  The woman fancied him.  Bodie bit back a smirk and shifted a quick glance to Soren noting that the sentiment didn’t seem particularly reciprocated.  Instead the man was still busily dissecting his partner, expression quite unreadable.

“I should warn you about the northern end of the island,” Soren said, abruptly bringing his attention back to Bodie.  “The cliffs are unstable and we are plagued by sea fogs at this time of year.  We have had visitors previously disregard this advice and have fallen to their deaths.  It is not something we would wish happen to you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Bodie replied, happily noting that so far, if you included Sergeant McIver of the Oban police, it was the third warning to stay away from the northern point of the island.   

Soren smiled at him.  “Good man.”

Morag returned, carrying a medium sized brown barrel.  She set it carefully on the bar and tapped the top with a small hammer.  The music abruptly stopped.

“My friends,” Soren stood and his voice deepened.  His bearing seemed to change, become imposing, commanding.  Bodie glanced up surprised.  The absent English undertaker disappeared and in his place stood a man both mesmerising and enigmatic.  He held out his arms.  “The season turns my friends, and the old ones are waiting.  Shall we honour them?”

There was a resounding cheer and Bodie looked around at the faces, all gazing raptly at the small keg with varying degrees of anticipation.

Doyle, still standing on the dance floor with the blond girl was regarding the man with a slight frown.  To the room, it would likely appear that he was translating silently, but Bodie knew he had also picked up the incongruousness of the accent.   The man turned his penetrating black eyes on Doyle and said, “Welcome my young friend.  Welcome to Eilean Rutha _._ I see you have met the lovely Isabel.” 

Doyle looked down at his companion and she smiled at him, but Bodie, who knew Doyle well, could see that his partner was still bothered by her.  He resolved to find out later what it was, but the man was speaking again.

“Come taste the nectar of the old ones.”  He reached out a hand and Morag placed a small glass into his fingers.  He took the glass and tossed back the contents in one swallow.  “ _Salainte_.”

“Old ones?”  Bodie asked, as Doyle came up beside him.

The black eyes were fixed on Doyle,   “Yes the Goddess and the Horned One.”  He nodded approvingly as Doyle was handed a glass of the pale yellow concoction.  “Drink their nectar my young Russian friend and the gods will smile on you and will mark you as a favourite.”

Doyle flicked a quick cautious glance at Bodie, who hadn’t touched his own portion.

“Please,” Soren abruptly laughed.  “Forgive my humour, and my theatrics.  I’ve dabbled in amateur theatre over the years and can’t resist the opportunity to indulge.  It’s a hobby of mine to study old myths and legends and where better than the highlands?”  He paused to wink at them, pleased with himself.  “Relax, it’s only mead, locally grown here on the island.”

Doyle brought his glass to his face and sniffed the contents suspiciously.  “Is only honey?”  he asked hesitatingly, playing the part of a confused tourist admirably.

It flashed briefly across those impenetrable black eyes.  Bodie would have missed it, if he were not watching the man so warily himself.  Hate.  Raw and pungent and gone just as quickly as it appeared, the slightly vague affable expression immediately back in place.

Soren, still seeing their hesitation called for a top up.  “It’s only honey,” he confirmed, “an old island recipe and one we soon hope to start selling commercially.” 

He lifted his glass in a silent toast, nodding at the lewd painting behind the bar.  “Some of the old ways are worth preserving.”

“Isla says you are a druid?”  Bodie remarked innocently, for Doyle’s benefit. 

Soren nodded readily, sipping his mead with obvious enjoyment.  “Yes, I follow the druid principals.  Redundant now, of course, so it’s basically just another hobby, but once Druids were the most powerful men in Europe.  So little remains of them and their practices, yet they were, without a doubt, revered by their people.”

“How come you’re here?”  Bodie went on curiously.  “You’re English aren’t you?”

Unhesitating agreement. “Yes. I came here a couple of years ago, while teaching in Glasgow.  I was writing a thesis on the disappearance of tradition among the highlands.  The island was dying, the soil is poor and the crops could not sustain the community.  So many people had already left.  But honey bees are prolific here and I saw the means to help out so I stayed.”

Doyle looked around.  “And the bees, they are all that you do here?  There are only young people, do they all work for the bees?”

For the first time Soren’s affable composure cracked.  “Young people are quick learners.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, Mr Dimitri.”

Doyle managed to look suitably baffled by the expression.  “Dogs?” he prompted, but Soren, recovering swiftly, was gesturing once more to the glasses in their hands.

“Drink, I can assure you it is good.”

Bodie raised his glass, sipped cautiously at the liquid.  It was smooth and mellow and coated his throat in a delicious warmth.  Surprised he held up the glass and studied it.  A pale golden yellow, it gleamed in the light.  “This is good.”

“Of course,” Soren seemed amused by his surprise, his mildness returning speedily.  “It has been made and consumed for hundreds of years in this part of Scotland.  Our bees are most obliging on this island.”  He looked at Doyle again. “But tell me of yourself, Mr Dimitri.  We see so very few Europeans here, and never anyone from Russia.  How do you find our country?”

“You have never seen Soviet people here?”  Doyle put on a puzzled frown.  “But you have a visitor here, only a year past.  My cousin said that when he was in this country, he was on the boat and that... a comrade got off here.”

“Your cousin?”  Soren enquired mildly.  “He must be mistaken, we’ve never had a Russian visitor here.  Perhaps he is confused with another island.”

“No, he said this one.  Red Island, is it not?  This island?  He wondered what was here for this young man to come here.  He tells me this.”

“Your barmaid seemed to be acquainted with Russians,” Bodie put in helpfully.  “Isla.”

Soren’s puzzled countenance relaxed and he smiled.  “Ah, I see the confusion.  Pay no attention to Isla.  Her mind is somewhat unstable.  She suffers dreadfully from anxiety and imagines all sorts of things, none of which are true.  Believe me, if there were Russians on this island, I would know about them.”

He refilled their glasses and smoothly changed the subject.  “But come now, Dimitri, I see Isabel wants to dance with you again.  She seems rather taken with you and I’m sure you would like to oblige her”

 

***

 

He wasn’t sure what had woken him. 

They had stayed late into the night, drinking the smooth mead and Doyle danced with several young women, who all paid him an obscene amount of attention.  The gathering had buzzed with an inebriated tangle of good vibrations, fuelled by both the freely flowing alcohol and the sharing of several joints, inhibitions falling by the wayside as the night went on.  Bodie hadn’t realised the strength of the mild flavoured alcohol until he’d found the room spinning and he’d excused himself to retire, staggering down the icy corridor at a tilt, like a schooner under full sail.  The bed looked inviting, the sheets almost glowing in the dim light from the window and it was all he could do to get his clothes off and crawl in, where he’d fallen almost immediately asleep. 

  
It was still dark and he glanced at the luminous hands on his watch, focussing with difficulty, but they seemed to be spinning madly around the face.  His head was still twirling like a child’s top.  What had woken him?  The curtains were wide open and a shadow moved at the window.  He glanced up quickly, hand reaching automatically for a weapon he wasn’t wearing.  Then he stopped appalled as the window seemed to recede and rush back, misty and indistinct, and a head appeared, a deer’s head with antlers, red eyes gleamed malignantly at him through the glass. 

Bodie shot out from the covers and dove for his bags, where his gun and ID were secreted, but the room was still spinning and off balance he crashed into the wall, sliding down to kneel in a uncordinated heap.  The Horned God slowly opened the window, one long leg appearing over the sill.  Bodie clutched his head in his hands, trying to stop the dizziness, trying to focus. The tall green skinned figure came closer, as naked as Bodie was himself, and Bodie tried to scuttle away, unreasonable fear gripping him, his training blasted completely from his mind, as though someone had wiped it clean of all thought and reason.  All he knew was that he had to get away from this apparition and yet his coordination had fled along with his training, his arms and legs refusing to cooperate, his sense of balance shot to hell and he was suddenly caught.  A long fingered hand came down over his mouth, fingers digging into the side of his jaw and desperately he clutched at it, his own grip weak and insubstantial, his nostrils full of the rich scent of the creature, of earth, of moss and damp stones.  And something else, something musky, animalistic.

“Leave this island.”  It was a whisper, but it seemed to reverberate in his head like a sonic boom. “Leave, or you will face death.  You do not belong here.”

Bodie fell back as he was released and the room ebbed again.  The creature was moving away, back to the window and the overpowering earthy smell dissipated.  He closed his eyes against the nauseating swell of images rolling and receding like a fast moving tide.  The cold assaulted him and he felt horribly sick.  He knew he should move but his limbs felt like jelly, and just as useful   He’d just stay here, on the icy floor, just for a minute... just for....

He jerked his eyes open.  A sliver of pale sunlight was filtering in across the bed from a crack in the closed curtains.  Sitting bolt upright he stared around the room then leaned across and jerked the curtains fully open flooding the room with the morning light.  All was as it should be, the window shut and latched against the cold, his belongings where he had left them.  He was warm in bed, the quilt neatly tucked in.  Staring around wildly, he scrubbed his hand across his face, the new growth scratching across his palm, an awful taste in his mouth.

A nightmare?  Was it a nightmare?  Like all military men, Bodie occasionally had nightmares, beauties some of them, where he was getting blown up, or he was blowing someone up.  Normal, Doctor Ross had stated, although he hadn’t actually confessed to her that he had them.  She’d known anyway, blast her meddling.   He flung back the covers and reached for his clothes, head pounding and mouth like cotton wool.  Oh yeah, he had plenty of nightmares about violence being done to either him or Doyle, the sort that would have him waking in a cold sweat.  But this was the first time he’d ever had a nightmare about a man with a deer’s head and the worst part.... the worst part was that it hadn’t felt like a dream.

 

***

**Chapter 6**

 

Doyle was late to breakfast and Bodie looked up from his first cup of coffee as his partner wandered in, looking decidedly the worse for wear.

“You look like I feel.” Bodie said to him as Doyle slumped at the table and put his head in his hands.  “What alcohol content do you reckon was in that mead?”

“Dunno,” Doyle said wearily, forgetting his accent, “But I don’t want another night like that.”

Bodie glanced around quickly, but they were alone for the moment.  “Didn’t have nightmares did you?”

Doyle raked slim fingers through his curls, which looked as if they had already suffered the punishment repeatedly this morning and gazed at him through bleary eyes. “Not exactly nightmares.”

“Not exactly?”  Bodie stared at him, all too aware of his own disrupted rest.  “Then what...?”

To his amazement, Doyle flushed.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Doyle blush, but his partner was clearly uncomfortable about something. 

“Do you remember that brothel we raided, the one in Carnaby Street, where all those illegal oriental girls were working?”

Bodie blinked, cast his mind back and remembered.  “Oh yeah, the one where....”  He grinned in delight, mind vividly supplying the graphic scene they’d interrupted while on a drug bust.  “You never dreamed that?” 

Doyle was rubbing his right wrist in an absent way.  He wasn’t smiling.  “Ever have a dream Bodie, where you don’t think it’s a dream?”

The Horned man at the window flashed before Bodie’s eyes and he looked at Doyle sharply, but before he could answer a clatter had them both jerking their heads up.  Isla quickly jerked her gaze from Doyle, steadied the tray of glasses she was carrying and set it down on the sideboard.  Bodie shot a wary glance at Doyle.  Where had she come from?

“There’s hot parritch, or toast and kippers if ye’ve a mind, or sausages and eggs.” She stared purposefully at the floor, not meeting their eyes.

Doyle roused himself to slip back into his Russian persona.  “Porridge please, and if you have orange juice?”

“Sausages and eggs,” Bodie said when prompted, wondering how much, if any, she had overheard of their conversation, particularly in view of the furtive looks she was now giving his partner.  “And more coffee for both of us please, Isla.”

She nodded and scurried away.

Doyle looked at him.  “Do you think she heard?”

“Dunno, we were talking pretty quietly. You’d better stay in cover, tovarishch, or we’ll blow this whole thing.”

Doyle nodded and sank his head onto his forearms, clearly still bothered by his bad night.

“It was just a dream Doyle,” Bodie said, concerned by Doyle’s closed eyes and pale cheeks.  “You need some fresh air.  Do the tourist thing, go for a walk, explore and find out where a defecting Russian agent would be hiding, while I do some surveying.  I’ve been told specifically to stay away from the northern end.”

One green-blue eye opened and peered at him, then Doyle straightened up.  “Have you?  Interesting.”

“Shall we meet back here for lunch?”  Bodie said, pleased to see Doyle’s inherent inquisitiveness flare up at that motivating tidbit. 

“Good idea. What time do you want....”  He automatically glanced at his left wrist and stopped what he was saying.  His wrist was bare.

“Did you forget it?” Bodie asked, wondering at the sudden disbelieving look on his partner’s face.

“I didn’t take it off.” Doyle said in a low voice.  He pushed both sleeves up and examined his wrists.  They were unmarked, the skin its natural pale gold colour, a lighter hue where his watch normally encircled his left wrist.  “But in the dream...”  He broke off again, flushing and Bodie remembered the scene again in that brothel in Carnaby Street and his own neck warmed at the recollection.

“I should be so lucky,” he muttered, comparing it to the menacing figure of the Horned One which had stalked his own sleep.

 Doyle’s head snapped up glaring at him. 

“It probably just fell off during the night, be in your bed I’d imagine.”  Changing the subject he leaned forward conspiratorially. .  “How’d you get on anyway?”

At Doyle’s blank look he clarified.  “With the lovely Isabel?”

Doyle snorted and the Russian accent was ludicrously misplaced when the street smart voice replied.  “Didn’t.  Teasing, that’s what she’s doing.  She doesn’t really like me and the feeling’s mutual.” He considered what he’d said and amended, “Well she doesn’t really like Dimitri, I should say.”

“She was all over you like a rash,” Bodie scoffed, slightly miffed at his own ignored status.

“She was all over the Russian like a rash,” Doyle corrected leaning forward and giving Bodie a pointed look.  “She was all friendly and welcoming and open, but her eyes were hard and cold.   Bodie there’s something strange going on here.”

Bodie didn’t disagree, he’d long since come to the same conclusion but having Doyle confirm it only made the unease escalate.  Doyle’s instincts were rarely wrong, if he said the girl wasn’t that enamoured of him, then she was clearly playing a game, playing the come on for a different reason altogether.

“She led you on all night and didn’t deliver?”  He clarified, having a hard time believing that Doyle, who attracted women like bees to honey, could have lucked out regardless of her reasons.

“Oh she’s willing to deliver.  But she said something about waiting for the festival.”

“What festival?”  Bodie frowned at that.  A festival, on a tiny island like this?

Isla appeared at that moment, with their breakfast and Bodie put it to her.  “Dimitri says there is a festival?”

The girl looked unhappily at Doyle.  “Tis May Day on Sunday.  The celebration of Beltane.”

Both operatives looked at each and then back at her.

She shrugged dismissively.  “Tis only small, nothing that ye need to stay for.”  Her eyes strayed to Doyle nervously.

“You do not like the festival?” Doyle asked her curiously.

“No.”

They sensed disapproval in her tone, timid as it was. 

“Why don’t you like it?”

“It is not what it was intended, it has been changed to suit the purpose of another.”

“Who?”

But she shook her head and fussed with their dishes.  “Tis not for me to say, ye need to ask Soren about the festival.”

She retreated once everything was set down and Doyle picked up his spoon.  “What was she on about?”

“Beltane is one of the pagan festivals,” Bodie said, who was a mine of information on this sort of trivia.  “A fire festival, something to do with spring and May Day and dancing around the May pole, bedecked in spring flowers.”

A soft snort greeted that statement.  “Oh that’d suit you right down to the ground.”

 

***

 

The minute he shut the door, he knew someone had been in his room.  And not just to make the bed, either, which had been tidied in his absence and the curtains tied back.  A pervading scent filled the air.  His nose twitched, identifying it as coming from the fresh wreath pinned to the wall above his bed.  Whatever herbs or foliage it was made of was certainly strong, as though deliberately to hide another less appealing scent, the smell of damp maybe. 

His rucksack was exactly where he had left it, but Doyle, with that copper’s instinct he’d developed to such devastating effectiveness, knew it had been searched.  He walked over and looked down.  All the zips were done up, the clothes inside neatly folded, his maps and timetables in their correct pockets.  But it was perhaps a bit too neat, it did not bulge as it had done when he’d packed it, in a hurry to catch the ferry.  He frowned, wondering what they had been looking for.  There was no passport, something neither he or Bodie had thought of, when he’d taken on a Russian persona, but he could have kept it on him for all they knew and no one had searched  him... except... well it was a dream, for all that it felt so real.  Yet, in the dream, his wrists bound with silk ribbons, had been bare... and he’d gone to bed with his watch on. 

He walked to the bed, which was neatly made and lifted the heavy counterpane, then the bedclothes, flinging the pillow away.  He dropped to his knees and peered under the bed itself- all clear.  He lifted the mattress away from the headboard and then pulled the bed away from the wall.  No sign of the watch.  He sat on the bed perplexed.  Where could it have gone?  The bed was old fashioned, heavy wood and iron rails.  He lay down, as though sleeping and let his left arm wander about the bedding, looking for a telltale bulge, an explanation for the missing item. 

Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, he raised them and held them against the railings behind his head, while staring at the ceiling, where he had seen the faces, young, feminine, ethereal.  Swinging his legs down, he turned slightly and peered down the back of the headboard, to where the railings were fastened into the base of the bed.  The wood was warped, a small gap only just visible if he turned his head at a careful angle.  He reached his hand down and carefully inserted two fingers into the gap, exploring cautiously.  His fingers locked on something cool and metallic and with great difficulty he fished it out, triumph turning to puzzlement when he realised it wasn’t his watch.  Instead he was looking at an ID bracelet, like the one Bodie sometimes wore.  It was silver, the solid links heavy and there was a word inscribed across the flat band.  Doyle had seen Nicholai Petrov’s file, and he could recognise the name, even in the Russian characters he was staring at.  Nicholai was engraved, in stark, bold etching across that flat piece of silver.

 

***

 

Bode knew he was being followed the minute he left the hotel.  Hoisting his equipment, staggering under the awkward weight, he made his way slowly up the incline behind the village, heading for higher ground.  New forest had been planted, he saw, slowly covering the barren land left from overgrazing.  Bodie had no idea of beekeeping, but thought perhaps the insects liked forest rather than open ground, hence the new planting.  His tail kept well behind him on the open ground, but once he entered the trees, the unseen presence came closer, not attempting anything but surveillance.

 Bodie stopped every so often and set up his tripod, opened his folders, wrote down numbers and took measurements.  He decided not to head directly to the north face, no sense in spooking his watchers and having them suspicious of him.  If they were to find anything at all, they would have to take care not to break their cover.  He angled across the uneven ground, taking his time, wondering if his watcher was going to stick with him all day.  It seemed he was as lunch grew closer and Bodie began to get hungry.  He meandered back again and suddenly came across a clearing. 

There were numerous little white boxes, set in rows, with a small black swarm above each one.  Several people moved around, wisely covered in netting and gloves, attending the hives.  Bodie stayed well back and watched for a bit.  The infamous honey, responsible for that potent mead.  A tall spindly figure broke away from the hives and ambled over to him.

He lifted his netting and Bodie saw it was Soren.

“Hello.” Soren nodded at the tripod Bodie was carrying.  “Are you making progress?”

“Yes,” Bodie indicated his clipboard.  “Can’t think how it was recorded wrong, so far these measurements are fine.  But there is a bit of work to do yet.  How are the bees?”

“Oh happy as Larry,” Soren said, turning slightly to look back at the hives.  “Hopefully we’ll get a good yield this summer, enough to enable a good bottling.”

Bodie watched the workers, thought he recognised the slim figure of Isabel and the solid young man called Duncan.  “Shame I won’t be around to see it.”

Soren nodded.  “Do you think you’ll be done by this Saturday?”

Bodie sensed again their need to have him gone by the weekend.  “Maybe,” he said non committedly and changed tack.  “You should open up the island to tourism, that would help you with the mead.”

Soren shook his head.  “There is little to encourage tourists here.”

“What about this thing on Saturday, this festival thing?” Bodie asked.  “Wouldn’t that be something you could promote?”

Soren swung his gaze vaguely around.  “Who told you about that?”

Most of the people in the pub last night were talking about it,” Bodie replied evasively.  “So we asked Isla at breakfast.  She said it is a small thing nothing we’d need stay for.”

“We?”

“Dimitri and I.”  Bodie quirked a brow at the sharp question.  “As he and I are the only guests, we’ve taken to having our meals together.”

“Ah, I see.”

Soren didn’t comment further and Bodie glanced at his watch.  “Well, I’m heading back down for lunch and to write up some notes.  Good afternoon.”

Soren nodded absently and Bodie turned and made his way carefully downhill, stopping every so often to adjust his equipment.  The tail stayed on him the entire way.

 

***

 

A thorough search of his room failed to turn up his watch and Doyle’s temper was up, fuelled by more than the theft.  He’d been quite tipsy last night, well more than quite tipsy, truth be told, but he remembered locking his door and he remembered getting undressed and he remembered leaving his watch on, as was his habit while on assignment.  He could not imagine, with his training, being so drunk as to not wake if someone had entered his room and removed his watch, and to support this belief, he had unlocked the door with the old fashioned brass key when he’d risen to use the bathroom.  No one could enter using a spare key while that one was sitting in the inside lock, nor could they replace the original key in the lock, from the outside, once they had left.  

The dream surfaced again, feminine faces swirling in and out of focus, his arms stretched above him, wrists tied with silk ribbons to the iron railings.  He snorted in embarrassed humour.  Silk ribbons for God’s sake!  Pink, no less.   Christ, what a dream!  Shaking his head faintly, he looked again at his rucksack and wondered if anything other than his watch had been taken.  He dumped the contents out, searching through them, but if anything was missing, it didn’t immediately come to mind.

He ran a hand through his hair again in agitation and decided to stir up some reaction.  Exiting from his room he approached the small dining room off the main bar, hoping to find Isla.  The girl knew something, every instinct he had told him that.  He just had to get beyond her obvious fear to find out.  But the dour Morag was there instead, attending to the fire, a basket of fresh peat bricks set aside.  She looked up as he approached and smiled at him.  “All right then?”

“Yes,” Doyle put on an artfully contrived look of bafflement.  “I am wondering.  I have lost my watch, I had it last night but this morning... it is gone.  Have you seen it?”

Her face blanked immediately.  “No, I havena seen it, did it fall off somewhere?”

“I looked in my room, it is not there.  I looked in the bathroom, I looked here.  I cannot find it.”

She straightened up.  “That is strange.  I’ll look around for you, no one here would have taken it Mr Dimitri, I’m sure it will turn up somewhere.”

“Thank you.”  Doyle said coolly.  The woman’s entire body language told him she knew exactly where his watch was, but he sensed he would get nowhere.  Dislike flared hotly, along with bafflement.  Why would they want it?  Recognising that he was close to blowing his cover, he decided to take Bodie’s advice and do some exploring, see what he could turn up.  “I go for walk now.”

“Aye, stay away from the northern cliffs though, they are dangerous.”

He ignored her warning.  Petrov had been here, might still be here somewhere, if not in the village, then perhaps elsewhere on the island.  He returned to his room to collect his jacket and locked the door firmly behind him.

Shrugging into his bomber jacket and tucking his scarf firmly around his neck, he left the pub and strolled unhurriedly up the street, past the last few cottages, further away from the water.  He’d never seen such a depressing array of houses, grey stoned and shut up, doors and window sills badly in need of paint, empty crab pots and torn netting scattered alongside narrow walkways.  And silent, not even a stray dog mooching around

All except the last one which stood at the end of the row, bordering the fields leading to the centre of the island.  The tiny garden was tidy, spring blooms starting to flower, the window trims and doors freshly painted.  As he walked past, he thought he saw the curtain give a guilty twitch, and a tingling between his shoulder blades confirmed he was being watched.  Thoughtfully he moved on. 

The wind increased as he moved purposefully up the incline stopping every so often to take in the view, which he had to admit was magnificent.  The ocean stretched out in front of him, grey and forbidding, decorated with snowy white caps.  As he climbed higher, the distant dark shape of Mull emerged, crouched like a sentinel, guarding the far-off mainland from the fierce north Atlantic wind. 

He wandered slowly along a sheep trail, alert for anything out of the ordinary, anything that could tell him where Petrov might be, assuming he was still on the island and Doyle was still of two minds about it.  It didn’t make sense why he would be, yet he hadn’t turned up anywhere else and the residents _were_ hiding something.  He’d bet a month’s pay on that.  Glancing back once, he saw the village laid out below him, unsurprisingly empty.  He gazed at the houses, mind ticking over.   According to the file, the police had searched the island for the missing Russian, including the houses and cottages, most of which were reported empty. 

However, a boat approaching from the mainland would be seen hours before it eventually docked, plenty of time to hide the young Russian elsewhere until the search was over.  But why?  And where?  Nothing so far made any sense whatsoever.  Patting his back jeans pocket, where his lockpicks lay, Doyle stared contemplatively at the row of grey stone houses and smiled with devilish humour.  Bodie wasn’t going to like it.  Immeasurably cheered by that thought he carried on, looking often down at the sea, musing on whether other parts of the island besides the main harbour could safely land a boat.  

The wind blew cold, lifting his hair and whipping it around his face.  The ground was boggy, occasionally sectioned in a square shapes where peat had been dug.   He lifted his face to the tree line, surprised again to see such a dense forest, when the rest of the island was nearly bare.  He took his time, glad to be away from the oppressive air of the village and the eyes that seemed to follow him all the time and gradually his mind wandered back to the dream, that didn’t feel like a dream, and Nicholai Petrov’s bracelet caught in the bed he was sleeping in. 

 

***

 

Bodie came down the hill towards the village and saw Doyle sitting on a flat rock, staring at the sea.  He detoured from his route and went to sit next to him, secure in the knowledge that his tail couldn’t get close enough to listen without exposing himself.

He could feel Doyle’s tension the minute he eased his equipment down.  His partner made room for him, sliding across before gazing at Bodie with eyes very nearly the colour of the sea below them.

“Petrov was here,” he said without preamble and Bodie glanced quickly at him, sensing Doyle’s impatience, his dislike of their surroundings. 

“How do you know that?” he said softly.

His partner’s long slim fingers delved into a pocket, extracting something that rattled, shone silver in the weak sunlight.  Bodie took it and let the links drape across his fist, a low whistle escaping from pursed lips.  “Where’d you find that?”

“Stuck in the back of my bed.”  Doyle nodded at his wrist.  “Looking for my watch.”  He cast a thoughtful look back out to sea. “Didn’t find it.  The watch that is.”

“You think someone has taken your watch?” Bodie asked, knowing that although unlikely, it wasn’t impossible.  Hotel staff had a perfect opportunity to nick their guests belongings and he said so.

Doyle turned to look at him and Bodie saw the impatience flare, finely drawn brows coming down over the green-blue eyes, matching the edgy tone as his partner said; “Then how do you reckon they got in?  When the door was locked from the inside and the key still in the lock.”

Bodie let that statement hammer home and thought uneasily to his own restless night.  “Window?”

“Locked,” was the short reply and Bodie knew that his was as well, against the cold night air.  Just a nightmare, he told himself firmly.

“Did you tell anyone?”

A faint snort.  “Yes, told Morag, she says no one would take it.  I suppose that same no one searched my rucksack too.”

“Nothing missing from there, though?” Bodie gave the bracelet back to Doyle, who pocketed it, leaving his hands there for warmth.

“No.  How was your morning?”

“Watched,” Bodie said and looked yearningly towards the mainland, wishing both he and Doyle were off this rock and in a pub somewhere sampling the local whisky.

“A tail?”  Doyle gave a grunt of resignation.  “Don’t like you wandering around out here mate.  What are they hiding then?”

“Well it’s not the bees.  Found them not too far from here.  Soren made no secret of them.”  Bodie looked askance at his partner. 

“And it’s more likely Petrov would be snug and warm in the village, not up here.” Doyle observed.

“So why are we being warned away.”  Bodie glanced towards the northern tip, at the cliffs and dense pines and beech covering the crest.  “And what will happen if we don’t.”

“Probably the same as Petrov,” Doyle said pessimistically and despite himself Bodie felt an uneasy skitter down his spine.

 

***

 

**Chapter 7**

 

That night the gathering in the pub was rather more subdued.  There was a sense of waiting among the young people present, a sense of expectancy that neither operative could put their finger on.  They sat at their usual table by the window, watching the sky gradually darken until a few stars peeped shyly above the eastern horizon.  The food was good, rabbit pie and peas, delicately flavoured with herbs Bodie couldn’t identify.  Across from him, Doyle appeared deep in thought, staring pensively through the window.

“Penny for them?” he said and the green-blue eyes flicked from the window to stare with an intensity that told him his partner had something up his sleeve.

“He could be here, couldn’t he?  In one of these cottages, keeping a low profile while we are here.”

Bodie considered it, nodding slowly.  “He could.  Be a job finding out though.”

 In answer Doyle held up his hand.  Concealed in the palm, hidden from curious eyes were his lockpicks.  Bodie groaned resignedly and gave his mischievous partner a long suffering look.  He received an unrepentant grin for his trouble.

Sudden movement from nearby had the lockpicks swiftly pocketed again.  Isabel sauntered past, smiling invitingly.  Doyle ignored her.  Disappointed she hesitated, before continuing over to a more amendable and welcoming group of young men.  Bodie watched her flirt with them, privately thinking that Doyle was passing up a good thing, a roll in the sheets would at least be some compensation for this miserable assignment and the girl did have a pleasing figure. His gaze slid back to his partner.  

Doyle wasn’t usually averse to taking advantage of a little horizontal exercise if the opportunity came up during an investigation, he’d done so before, although admittedly it was often in order to win a bet with Bodie rather than any particular desire on his part, but his dislike of this girl was quite apparent.  Bodie was sure he wouldn’t have been so particular himself.  No such luck though, thanks to Cowley assigning him a role that held all the attraction of a leper in a nudist colony, his supposed occupation was too close to officialdom for the community to warm to him. 

Instead, he tuned into the small pockets of conversation, the bright eyes and eager voices, hushed and excited.  Beer and spirits flowed liberally but Soren did not make an appearance and neither did the mead.

He got up to get another couple of beers, leaning on the bar and staring at the painting of Cernunnos while conversations ebbed and flowed like the hum of a motorway all around him.  Much of the talk was in Gaelic, an annoyance he could have done without, but occasionally he picked up English phrases.  It seemed to be centred around the ongoing festival on Saturday and suddenly he caught an indiscreet phrase _.  Wake up the green man_.   His ears pricked up immediately.  Green Man?  He turned casually to look for the source.  A group of girls, giggling and flushed, the men amongst them smugly pleased.  Before he could eavesdrop further though, the large fit young man called Duncan served him, drawing the pints with practised ease. 

Bodie took them back to the table, where Doyle was again staring out of the window, tapping his fingers on the scrubbed wooden top. 

“What’re you looking at?”

Doyle flicked his gaze from the window to his partner and tilted his head.  “Been watching us for a while.”

Bodie peered out, tilting his head against the reflection.  A man stood, on the other side of the street, back to the darkening sky, shadowed face intent on their window.  His build was familiar, long, lean, slouched, with hands deep in his pockets.

Bodie looked him over carefully, feeling that familar prickling sensation down his spine.  “Who do you reckon he is?”

Doyle cast him a sly look.  “Well he’s not Britt Ekland, is he?”

“More like Christopher Lee,” Bodie agreed, but his gaze was sharp as the man finally turned and walked up the street, into the darkness.

He leaned forward until Doyle turned his head to gaze questioningly at him.  “Flip you for it?”

Doyle grinned at him, attuned as always to his thoughts.  “It’s me he was watching.  You scared him away.”

He got up and left quietly.  Bodie leaned back and picked up his beer, lazily observing the room.  More than one pair of eyes had watched his partner leave and more than one frown marred the young faces.  Bodie was confident that Doyle could take care of himself, but nevertheless, the ominous feelings vibrating along his nerve endings refused to die down.  He sipped his drink and turned his attention to the window.  He’d give Doyle fifteen minutes.

  
***

 

The man wasn’t so far ahead of him that Doyle had any difficulty following.  Instinctively he kept to the shadows, guessing that whoever his quarry was, he’d not take kindly to being followed.  The man walked the street with a hill walker’s steady stride, unbothered by the slight incline, tall frame outlined by lights from the few occupied cottages.  Doyle quickened his pace, shivering slightly; he’d left without his jacket and was feeling the chill.

The man finally stopped at the last cottage in the row, the one where Doyle had seen the curtain twitch that morning.  He knocked sharply and the door opened, words were exchanged in softly spoken Gaelic.  Doyle strained to see who had opened the door but his view was blocked as the man was immediately admitted and the door closed again.

Doyle sidled around to the cottage, ducking beneath windows that were all heavily curtained.  He circumnavigated the house twice to be sure, but there was no possible way to eavesdrop.  Taking a risk, he carefully tried the handle on the back door, but it was locked.  Listening intently, wary of discovery, he retrieved his lockpicks and carefully worked the lock until he heard the tiny click, but the door still refused to open.  Bolted from the inside most likely.  Gritting his teeth in frustration, he silently retreated to the shadows on the opposite side of the street, prepared to wait them out, wrapping his arms about himself against the cold.

A half moon moved lazily in and out of clouds and Doyle was shuffling quietly on the spot in an effort to warm his near frozen limbs, when something heavy fell across his shoulders.  Spinning instantly, he pulled his punch just in time but Bodie, correctly anticipating his reaction had already stepped away from the blow.  He grinned as Doyle glared at him.

“Give a bloke a bit of warning next time,” Doyle hissed. “ _Anglichanin_.”

Bodie tutted at him.  “Such language – comrade.”  He picked up the fallen jacket and held it out to his partner, peering at the house.  “Find anything?”

Doyle shook his head.  “No, he just knocked and was let in.  Spoke Gaelic so I don’t know what they said, but the doors are locked and bolted.”

“Odd that.”  Bodie whispered.  “Why would they lock the door?”

“Well why wouldn’t they?” Doyle countered, betraying his city origins.

“Up here, doors are rarely locked, Doyle,” Bodie told him. “Specially in such a small community.”

“Is that right?”  Doyle leaned back on his heels and eyed his partner with one raised brow.  “How do you know that, then?”

Bodie sniffed delicately.  “I might have had cause to find out, once or twice... in the past.”

Doyle snorted.  “Going in or out?”

“Both actually,” Bodie grinned, “How long do you want to wait for?”

“Till they come out,” Doyle said impatiently, shrugging into his jacket and doing up the zip.  “Didn’t you bring my scarf as well?”

“All the better to strangle you with.”  Bodie dug his own hands deep into his own pockets.  “It’s a balmy warm night to the Scots and a heatwave for a young communist lad like yourself.  Your leaving the pub caused a bit of a stir.  I’d say they wanted you to stay”

Doyle grunted.  “Well they’re only human.”

Bodie smiled tolerantly.  “Yeah well, irresistible charms aside, you still need to watch your back.”

“That’s your job Bodie, remember.”  Doyle’s attention was riveted on the object of their surveillance.

Bodie sighed and peered again at the house.  “Maybe they’ve gone to bed.  Dreaming sweet dreams eh?”

“Glad someone is.” Doyle muttered darkly.

He gazed at his partner in surprise.  “You’re not still on about intruders in your room?”

Doyle gave him a level look but said nothing.  Bodie knew his partner well enough to know that it was uncharacteristic of Doyle to be troubled by nightmares.  Not that he didn’t have them, who wouldn’t doing their line of work and they’d learned long ago how to let them go, put them aside in the cold light of day. 

He thought back to his own nightmare, the image of Cernunnos climbing through the window.  At the time it hadn’t felt like a dream, but the morning light lent the vision far less credibility than the shadows of the night had, even if a niggling doubt remained. 

Yet Doyle hadn’t budged from his suspicion that his had been real – as remote as the likelihood seemed.  Bodie had never before doubted Doyle’s instincts - he might argue with them - but he didn’t doubt them, having had his hide saved by those instincts on more than one occasion.  Thoughtfully regarding the man beside him, he decided to make a few plans of his own.

He was interrupted from his musings by the cottage door abruptly opening, accompanied by raised voices.  The tall man that Doyle had followed stepped out, accompanied by two others, one stocky with a cloth cap and short jacket and the other slight and small in jeans and a jumper.  They stood in the bright light of the open door for a time conversing in their own language before moving off, escaping into the darkness of the fields surrounding the village. 

The door shut again.  The partners looked at each other.

“Can’t go after them now, Doyle,” Bodie said reasonably.  “You’ll break your neck out there in the dark, not to mention blowing your cover.  We’d do better to see who’s in the house first.”

He felt Doyle relax, accepting his advice.  They waited again, but in no time at all, the lights went out and the house fell into darkness.

 

 

***

 

“You are supposed to be luring him, seducing him.”

“I am trying.  He doesna seem to respond.”

“Perhaps because you let your dislike of his nationality show.”

The silence that greeted that statement was sullen.

“We cannot allow him to leave on the weekend ferry.  If you do not do your duty, I will find someone else and you will not be honoured on Saturday.”

“I can do it,” the voice mirrored the sullen expression. 

“I hope for your sake you can.”

 

***

 

Listening carefully Bodie hovered by his partner’s door until he heard Doyle turn the key.  Nodding approvingly, he then entered his own room, leaving the door slightly ajar, but heard nothing else.  Yet.   The sense of unease, of something not right hadn’t abated one iota and his own nocturnal disturbances were enough to cement his decision to forego his own rest to stand guard.  He hadn’t told Doyle he’d intended to watch his door all night, but if someone was getting into his partner’s room, Bodie wanted to know about it. 

Yawning he glanced at his watch, the hands stood at 10:43.  Pulling the counterpane off the bed, he settled down by the door to keep watch, acknowledging wryly that it was going to be a long night.  Closing his eyes, he settled into a semi somnolent state, which still had every sound the old building made coming in loud and clear.  The pub quietened, the street grew sleepy, the distant ocean just a murmur in the dark.  The corridor outside their rooms stayed reassuringly empty.   He did not allow himself to fall into a light doze, until the approaching dawn stained the eastern horizon.

Two hours later, after waking cramped and cold, Bodie found his partner sitting alone in the dining room, staring out of the window, an uneaten bowl of porridge and a cooling cup of coffee in front of him.  Relief surged; after a night and a morning enduring the strong sense of foreboding, it was almost an anticlimax to see his partner unharmed, if a little pale.  Doyle looked up alertly as he approached, finely drawn brows raised inquiringly at his groggy eyes and tired expression.

“A pea too many under your mattress?”

“Wouldn’t know,” he admitted wearily.  “I didn’t get to sleep on it.”

Doyle stared at him incredulously.  “You never stayed awake all night.”

Bodie yawned.  “Yeah, well, if you were going to have dreams that aren’t dreams, including that little show we witnessed on Carnaby Street, I wanted a piece of the action.” He slumped into his chair and reached for Doyle’s coffee.  “Waste of time though, seems we both lucked out there.”

Silence greeted that statement.  Bodie paused in the act of lifting the cup to his lips.  “You dreamed again?”

Doyle looked at him and then away.

“The same?” Bodie queried.

A tight nod.

“And it didn’t feel like a dream?”

“No.”  Doyle rubbed his wrists absently. 

Bodie took a sip of Doyle’s coffee, made a face and reached for the sugar bowl.  “Hate to tell you Sunshine, but it was definitely a dream.  No one went in or out of your room, I can guarantee it.”

Doyle gave him a disconcerted look then switched his gaze to the window.  “This is weird, Bodie.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”  He yawned widely and Doyle tilted his head, studying him.

“You didn’t have to stay up.”

“Yes I did.  But now that we both know it’s just a dream, I’m going to have a bath and couple of hours sleep, while you, sweet little communist lad like yourself, you can go and charm your way into that locked house.”  Bodie stood and stretched, glancing around to check that they were alone.  “I will see you later my son.”

He reached out and Doyle ducked automatically from the casual swipe through his hair, but Bodie abruptly stopped, half way through the familiar gesture to change direction, grasping Doyle’s shoulder instead.

“What?”  Doyle tried to jerk his head away, but Bodie held him still, his other hand lifting up a section of Doyle’s curls, eyes narrowed.  There was a sizable lock of hair missing, roughly shorn off, an inch of so from his head.

Puzzled green-blue eyes narrowed at his expression, before a hand came up, feeling for himself, agile fingers encountering the hewn ringlet.  Realisation dawned and Doyle gritted his teeth, misty memory of feminine hands tugging at his hair.  “Thought you said it was just a dream.”

“Couldn’t have been last night, Ray, I’d have seen them.”

“Oh, well that’s all right then, I just missed someone hacking off a chunk of my hair while I was awake.”  The caustic comment was a good indication of Doyle’s brewing temper and Bodie didn’t need the reminder that his partner was reaching the end of his patience. 

“The window, maybe.”  He pursed his lips baffled, although the walls were thick enough to muffle sound, he didn’t think he would have missed it.  “Couldn’t have, you’d have heard and I’d have heard them go in the door.”

Doyle’s look was disbelievingly flinty. 

“Come on mate, it doesn’t take a Mata Hari to cut off a bit of hair.  You were well on your way the first night we were here, could have happened then and you just haven’t noticed, what with  getting on with things and with that untidy mop, it’s no wonder. ”  He watched Doyle digest that, saw that his explanation while plausible wasn’t wholly accepted.

“But what’s the point?  What do they want?”

“Dunno.” And again Bodie felt that eerie sense of foreboding, as though something much bigger was going on, and they were on the wrong track altogether.

Doyle was silent for a bit, angry fingers carding through his curls, as though searching for further abuse to his hair.  Finally he looked up and there was a decidedly determined look on his face. “It felt real Bodie, even though...” he hesitated and finished lamely. “Well, tonight, I’m staying awake, then we’ll know for sure.”

“And sober,” Bodie advised, “If someone is catching you asleep on the job, there may be a mickey finn involved somewhere.”

“Yeah?  With everyone else drinking the same brew?  I’ve watched them pour it Bodie, there’s nothing added.”

“Good point.” He conceded grudgingly. “Well maybe your meal then?  Someone in the kitchen?”

Doyle’s expression darkened.  Bodie sympathised, knowing Doyle’s strong anti drug stance, but his partner had an argument for that as well.  

“Would have happened sooner than it did if they had, I went to bed hours later.”

Bodie frowned.  “Then it’s a dream Ray, it’s not real, there is no way they can get in.  It was probably your hairdresser, botched your last haircut and you never noticed.”

Doyle gave him a withering look.  “I’m going to find out.” 

“And blow your cover?  Cowley will just love that.”

“The cover isn’t getting us any answers is it?”  Doyle pointed out with some asperity. “Still aren’t any closer to finding out what happened to Petrov than the day we arrived.”

“Not by playing the waiting game, no,” He agreed, wondering how long that volatile temper would stay in check.  “But pushing a bit might just stir the pot a little.”

Doyle looked at him for a long moment, then heaved a conciliatory sigh. “I don’t know about you Bodie, but I’ve had enough of this one.”

“Yeah, me too mate, me too.”

Isla was again absent from kitchen duty, their breakfast brought instead by a short plumpish girl called Diana.  She seemed very giggly, watching Doyle covertly from under pale lashes, as though privy to a great secret that no one else knew.  Doyle endured her attention, kept his temper in check and asked where Isla was. 

“I don’t know,” Diana answered, her accent pure Yorkshire.  “She’s an odd one is Isla.  But then again she were born here weren’t she?  There’s now’t she don’t know about the old ways.”

“What old ways?”  Doyle exchanged a quick glance with Bodie. 

“Why the herbs.  Healing and things.  She’s a dab hand with the herbs.”  She smiled at him again, clearly willing to be sociable.

“You’re a long way from home.” Bodie said casually.  “How did you end up here?”

“Like most of us,” the girl answered, still staring at Doyle. “Went to university in Glasgow, met Soren there and ended up here.”

“You were studying bees?” Doyle asked with gentle humour and the girl giggled.  “No, chemistry actually.”  She put down a plate of toast with a flourish and disappeared back to the kitchen.

“The way you’re going mate, you could set yourself up a harem, no trouble.” Bodie remarked.

“Not doing anything,” Doyle asserted acidly.  “They should take out an advertisement in the Moscow Times.  For a good time phone Soren, do not reply unless you are Russian.”

“Bunch of pot smoking, hippy drop outs if you ask me, all looking for a free ride on the system by hiding in an alternative lifestyle.”  Bodie was as fed up as his partner with this strange fascination they all seemed to have for the supposedly young Russian visitor, a fascination that made no sense, particularly after the cold reception Doyle had received elsewhere in Scotland.

Doyle grunted thoughtfully.  “A commune?”  He shook his head with sudden humour.  “Well that fits, no wonder they don’t like you mate, fascist regime of the first degree, Ordnance you know.”

 “Yeah.”  Bodie stared morosely out at the sea, watching a trawler beat its way slowly away from the island towards the mainland, vaguely wondering where it had come from.  He was positive it hadn’t been in the harbour during the night and he hadn’t seen any activity around the quay apart from the ferry the day they landed.  Rain squalls threatened, the day grey and forbidding, the street empty and silent and he remarked sourly, “What a perfect morning.  To stay in bed.”

Doyle buttered a piece of toast and tilted his head at his partner’s mood.  “Should be used to it,” he said mockingly, “An old sea salt like you.”  At Bodie’s glare he added, “Well you did say you’d spent time up here before in rain, sleet and hail.  Who dares wins and all that.” 

Bodie sighed and brought his attention back to his plate, where not even his mountain of bacon and eggs could lift his spirits.  Wandering over the hills, pretending to do surveys in this sort of weather wasn’t his idea of a good time. 

“You could do measurements on the north point of the island,” Doyle said slyly, reaching for the pot of marmalade, “and see what it is they don’t want you to see.”

“Yeah?” Bodie picked up his fork and speared a piece of bacon.  “And what are you going to do?”

“Thought I might go see if Britt Ekland is in that locked cottage.”  Doyle replied, reaching for more toast.  “Where it’s nice and dry.”

 

***

 

**Chapter 8**

 

The village stretched out before him, reflecting the grey of the sky and the dark scudding clouds.  As elusive and unenlightening as an unsolved case.   Doyle began to stroll up the street, looking at the houses, musing on the fate of Nicholai Petrov, a man who had seemingly vanished into thin air on this very island.  He was inclined to think that they were barking up the wrong tree.  True, he’d found the bracelet, but it didn’t mean that Petrov hadn’t since left.  Moved on to somewhere else and they were simply wasting their time here, an amusement for an odd group of people who got their kicks out of stealing watches and chopping of bits of hair.  And yet, something... something about this place spooked him.  It sat, malevolent as a bad spirit, like a miasma over the cottages, both empty and inhabited.  Not to mention the solid little fact that Nicholai Petrov _had_ disembarked on this island – a memorable young Russian – and no one recalling it at all.

He walked on, towards the last cottage and noticed a peculiarity.  Some of the doors were now decorated with a wreath, a twisted circlet of sticks and leaves.  He meandered closer to the nearest one attached to a plain wooden door and saw that it was similar to the one above his bed in his room.  Curiously, he stopped, peering at the intricate way it was woven, but again could not identify the foliage used. 

“Rowan,”  a voice said suddenly and he jerked, spinning around.  Isabel stood there, a smile on her mouth, her eyes cold.  “And a bit of heather, some wormwood, some catnip.”

“This is for Christmas?”  Doyle queried, unable to formulate a reason for the decoration.

“No, it is for May Day tomorrow.”  She smiled at him again.  “Ye’ll be here, aye, to join in the celebration?”

Doyle watched her, head tilted on one side.  The question had an urgency to it that she was trying to hide.  So badly wanting him to stay.  But why?  And what would they do if he didn’t?  He decided to test it.  “I think not.  I will leave on the ferry.  In the morning.  I have other places to see.”

Her disappointment was obvious.  Less obvious was the panic she swiftly concealed.  “Are ye sure now, ye’ll be missing a grand party.”

He studied her.  “Yes I am sure.  This May Day, it will be on Lewis yes?  Perhaps I will see it there.  It is a Scottish thing?”

She nodded, and then changed tactics, opting for flirtation.  “But none so good as ours.  Say ye’ll stay Dimitri.  I should like it very much.  We could go on celebrating.  All night if ye like.”

He shrugged at her, as though willing to consider it, although in truth she left him quite cold.  “But you will have other visitors from the boat.  When the ferry comes in.”

“But they willna be Russian, will they?”  She argued and leaned close to him, close enough to brush alluringly up against him.  “Tis very lucky to have a Russian at the festival, to have one for the night.”

“And why is that?”  He waited expectantly but she just gazed at him an odd smile playing about her mouth.

“You have had Russians here before?” Doyle frowned at her, at that sudden malicious look, but then she was smiling again, all seductive, tempting.

“To leap the flames and lay with one such as you?  Ah Dimitri ye willna regret it, if ye’d only stay.”

Doyle’s frown grew.  What was she on about?  A vague recollection of Bodie’s lewd talk of group sex in the grass fleetingly crossed his mind.  That couldn’t be it; Bodie was just winding him up.  Not in this day and age, they’d all be arrested for a start, not to mention catching their deaths.

“To honour the Goddess for Beltane.” She pushed persistently.

Doyle had had enough of her games.  He nodded to the door.  “This decoration.  What is it for?”

“They ward off evil spirits,” She replied, readily enough. 

Doyle raised a brow.  “There are evil spirits on the island?”

“There are evil spirits everywhere.”

“They are not on all the doors,” he observed impatiently as he resumed his stroll along the main street. 

She kept pace with him, drawing her jacket loosely around her.  “Not all the houses are occupied.  Most are empty now.”

“Why?” 

“They moved away.  Not enough here, not till Soren started the bees.  Only a few remained before we came.”

“We?”  Doyle was surprised.  “You are not from here?”

She shook her head and grimaced.  “No, from Glasgow.”

“Then why do you come?”

She suddenly gave him a suspicious look.  “Many reasons.”

Doyle caught the suspicion, pretended disinterest.  “And now you raise bees?”

“Aye.”

He was careful with his next question.  “Did the people here already have the bees?”

“No, Soren started that.”

Ahead of him the locked cottage beckoned, teasing him with its secrets.  As Doyle glared at it, affronted by his inability to get in, the door opened and a hunched figure appeared, a basket over one arm.  She shut the door behind her and scurried away, not looking in their direction. The long ribbons of blond hair and the nervous play of hands at her throat gave her away instantly.

“Does Isla live there?”  he asked the sullen girl beside him.

“Aye.”

Doyle watched as Isla hurried away in a westerly direction, away from the village, eyes on the path she was following.  Immediately the door opened again and a long lean figure followed her, hunched down into his coat.  His posture was familiar... the man at the window last night.

  
“Who is that?” he asked Isabel.

She shrugged.  “Looks like Ewan Fraser.  He keeps the sheep.”

“He does not live in the village?”  Doyle kept his tone light.

“No, he has a wee croft.  He doesna like newcomers so he keeps to himself.” 

Fat rain drops began to fall as Doyle looked at the cottage.  The curtains twitched guiltily back into place over the window.  He glanced towards the path taken by Isla and the tall man.

Isabel placed her hand on his arm.  “The rain comes, t’would be better aye, to come to the pub for a wee dram and sit by the fire.”  She smiled at him winningly and gave a small tug.  “Mayhap I can coax Soren to open the mead.”

Doyle’s patience snapped.  “Look, what do you want?”

Undeterred by his tone she smiled at him.  “Just you Dimitri.  Just you, to lay with ye at Beltane.”

Doyle gazed steadily at her.  At her smiling face and hard eyes, felt the insistent tugging away from this cottage, away from the path that Isla had taken.  What didn’t she want him to find?  Was it here in the cottage, or along the sea path taken by the tall man and the girl?  Doyle wasn’t about to let a little rain stop him from finding out.

“Perhaps later.”

He left her standing on the cobbled road, brow creased in annoyance as he paused by the locked cottage.  It too, had a wreath of greenery on its door, but in contrast, it was a wreath of willow, woven with a few early spring flowers, pleasing in appearance, a lovely soft scent surrounding him as he examined it.  Glancing back, he sensed Isabel’s sudden panic at his hesitation and knew instinctively she didn’t want him appraising the garland, didn’t want him approaching the cottage.  He nearly smiled.  Interesting.  Could Petrov be in here?  Had Isla been delivering food in the basket or taking food to him elsewhere?  Where had she gone?

 Isabel was still watching anxiously and Doyle decided he would follow Isla and see what she was up to.  He strolled past the cottage and took the rocky path down towards the water and when he next looked back she was gone.  

It was a beautiful walk, despite the rain and the heavy clouds rolling in from the sea.  Waves crashed against boulders and gulls wheeled overhead.  He reached a small promontory and saw some protruding rocks out to sea, dark grey with black shapes on them.  Seals perhaps, although it was hard to tell with the sting of rain on his face. 

The track abruptly turned inland, the wet grass soaking his jeans and Doyle followed it some way before coming across a small whitewashed cottage set in a clearing.  He stopped and watched guardedly, noting the animal pens, and small outbuildings.  Blue smoke pumped steadily from the chimney.  There was no way to get closer without being seen and so he decided to brazen it out, keeping to his cover as a curious tourist. 

Moving cautiously, wishing he was armed he covered the distance quickly and he was soon at the front door, which had once been painted a sky blue but was now peeling and bleached.  On impulse, he angled away to the side, to the back door and heard voices raised in argument.  He stopped, pressed against the side of the house, listening, but they were arguing in Gaelic.  He frowned impatiently.  What had Cowley been thinking, sending them up here without either of them knowing the local dialect; the old man must be slipping to have not thought of that minor, but rather important detail.  Just as he was tossing whether to go or stay, the decision was made for him.  Excited barking preceded the appearance of a fit and healthy border collie.  Tail wagging furiously, it nevertheless kept up a steady stream of warning and Doyle stepped quickly away from the wall as the dog’s owner followed.

Dark eyes raked him, unfriendly and cold.  “What are ye doing here?”

“Just walking,” Doyle offered a smile.  “The path led me here.”

“This is my property, remove yeself from it.”  The man exuded menace, mouth thinning, eyes flashing with dislike.  Doyle had no doubt it was the man who had been watching them the night before, the same build, same intensity to the lean sun weathered face.    

“There is no need to be unfriendly,” Doyle said, gauging the man’s mood.  “I do not come to cause harm.”

“Your kind do nothing but cause harm.” The man spat vehemently.

“My kind?”  Doyle echoed, surprised.  “You do not like the Russian people?”

 “Nae I dinna like the Russians.  Ye cause all sorts of trouble and its trouble we dinna need.  Now go.”

He moved his arm curtly and the dog’s barking abruptly changed to a warning growl.  “Go now Russian, if ye value ye hide.  Ye should not have come here.”

Wary of the dog, Doyle did.  He glanced back often, to see the man staring after him.  He did not see Isla.

 

 

***

 

The man whistled softly to the dog and returned to the cottage, brows drawn sourly down over dark eyes.  He moved to the fireplace, barely looking at the girl, who sat hunched at the table by the fire, long hair wet and tangled.

“The ferry comes in the morning.” she studied him in the dim light.

He glanced at her as he swung the kettle over the flames.  “It is too late now.  The Goddess must be honoured and he has been chosen.”

She shivered and raised her fingers to the strangely woven pendant at her throat.  “What of the other?”

“He didna heed the Green Man.”  He looked into the fire, expression grim, menacing.  “He will face the consequence of it.”

She gazed at him beseechingly.  “Please Ewan.”

He looked at her, dispassionately, his dark eyes fathomless. 

“He didna deserve it,” she whispered.  “And neither does this one.”

“Then he shouldna be Russian,” was the harsh, unforgiving response.

 

***

 

He walked slowly, dragging his equipment, putting on the show for the tail he knew was following him.  The path was narrow, cut into the steep hill by years of hoof beats, meandering without rhyme or reason, hemmed in by sheer granite boulders, loose rock and precariously shallow rooted heather on one side and the abrupt drop to the sea on the other.  Bodie was very careful to stay well away from the edge, Sergeant McIvor’s words clear in his memory.  _The cliffs are dangerous, there’s been more than one tourist fall off and get killed_.

He could believe it all right, there was nowhere to go but down if one missed their footing.  But somehow it didn’t seem to ring true.  The track was hardly used, and there were certainly other more accessible points for a view.  Suspecting strongly that he’d been led astray, misdirected to this dangerous part of the island, he paused to take a breather, relieved that the path seemed to be finally curving inland, away from the treacherous drop.   The sea was turning grey, matching the rain clouds moving swiftly towards him.  He eyed both with an unfavourable eye.  Just great, now he was going to get soaked.  Grumbling he reached for his clipboard and the topographical print attached to it. 

He almost missed it, didn’t know how he spotted it in the tangled grass underfoot.  He’d dropped his pen and bending to retrieve it, his eyes had caught the flash of yellow.  Reaching out he picked it up, the white cylinder only half smoked, the yellow tip and faint letters unmarked by the dew of the morning.  Bodie brought the remains of the cigarette up and squinted at the lettering. _Sobraine._

Russian.  And fresh.  And suddenly there was hope.  Petrov was still on the island somewhere.  Had stood here and smoked a cigarette in the last five hours or so, since the rain of the morning.  Which meant....

But Bodie got no further.  A deep rumbling penetrated his careening thoughts and his blue eyes jerked up startled.  A large boulder had come loose, was tumbling down the steep incline, dislodging smaller rocks in its path, cascading dirt and plants with its passing and headed on a direct line to where he stood, steep descent to the sea on one side, sharp incline of cliff face on the other.  Nowhere to go.

Adrenaline surging, Bodie abandoned his equipment and glanced rapidly around, jungle instinct taking over.  To head back downhill was nothing short of suicide; the boulder would swipe him over the edge long before he cleared the narrow ledge. Instead he looked up, saw a way, the only way and without a second thought took it. 

A quick desperate leap had him half way up the sharp incline, and his hands were digging in, feet scrabbling for purchase as he made for a small overhanging niche, only just visible from the narrow stock path he was using.  His hands slipped on the damp stone, shoes unable to grip, the boulder now horrifyingly close, small rocks preceding it, battering his hands.  For God’s sake.  Stretching up, his desperately searching fingers found purchase and he hauled himself upright, shoulder muscles and arms straining with the effort. Kicking furiously, he finally managed to roll onto the narrow ledge, and scramble towards the protective overhang.

Quickly inserting himself, he tucked his legs in, pushing his head down between his knees, hugging the back wall of the small recess, making himself as small as possible. He was just in time.  A shower of dirt and stones came down over his head, coating his neck, trickling down into his collar and down his back.  The air was suddenly clouded with damp earth and he breathed it in, coughing and spluttering.  Something immense hit the ground just near his left foot and he scrunched tighter hearing the rumbling pounding noise of the boulder passing and then it was mercifully fading away, punctuated by smaller cracks and snaps as lesser debris settled around him. 

Bodie raised his head cautiously and looked around, blinking in an effort to clear the dust and grit from his eyes. Occasional pebbles and clumps of earth still fell, hitting his shoulders and legs.  His hands were scratched and bleeding, his trousers torn, one knee weeping in agony.  The boulder was still tumbling down the path he had just climbed, the muffled thuds of its journey echoing back to his dazed senses, abruptly silencing as it went over the edge and into the sea far below.   He’d have been killed if he’d tried to outrun it.  He _couldn’t_ have outrun it in any direction.  The cigarette butt was still clutched in his hand.  Slowly he uncurled his fingers and gazed down.  And Bodie’s fuse ignited.

 

***

 

Doyle spent a wet and miserable afternoon watching the cottage from a distance.  He saw Fraser come out, go about his business around the small croft, spend considerable time in a pen full of sheep, Doyle couldn’t imagine doing what and then attend to some other odd jobs by the back door.  Doyle willed the man to leave, go and do whatever it was that shepherds did with the sheep dotted on the hills, but Fraser was being deliberately uncooperative, staying protectively close to home.

Frustratingly aware that he had only half a day left before his supposed departure on the Saturday morning ferry, Doyle fidgeted restlessly, impatient with all this cloak and dagger stuff, itching to confront the inhabitants, get results.  And yet, even as he thought it, he knew they would clam up, already had done so to the Oban police. 

Eyes narrowed on the property, he judged it from all angles, and finally conceded defeat, unable to approach unseen, unless Fraser left the property and took the dog with him.  To make matters worse, Isla did not appear at all, not even to return to the village and Doyle might have doubted she was there at all, had he not heard the arguing and known she had come this way.   He thought he might corner her tonight, either him or Bodie and get her to start talking.

The rain began to fall heavier, soaking the ground, the grass and Doyle equally.  He glanced irritably at the sky and straightened up, stretching his back, wondering how Bodie was getting on.

 

***

 

Fury flashed along his nerve endings like electricity and Bodie had a hard time containing it.  Chillingly aware of how close he had come to death, he waited still as a statue in his inadequate shelter, wet and filthy, senses alert to his surroundings, ears pricked for any movement at all.  Eventually he heard it, only just, over the distant surge of the ocean.  Small cracks, rustles, footsteps fading away.  With difficulty he resisted the impulse to jump out and confront the person who he believed responsible for the landslide.  Instead he waited, years of jungle training taking over, adopting the patience of a stalking cat, until it was silent again.  Then he moved. 

Lithe and agile, he scrambled up and over the nearly obliterated track, taking perilous risks as he climbed upwards, to the source of the landslide.  Breathing heavily he finally arrived at the starting point of the upturned and scarred earth.  The bare indent was devoid of the grass that grew in a semi circle around it.  Small worms twisted and turned with the shock of their unexpected and abrupt exposure, the earth beneath them dark and moist.  Bodie’s narrowed eyes moved from the flat indent, to the gouged score of turf and mud and on to the long slim trunk of a felled pine, still green with sap, which had been used to prise the boulder from its resting place. 

His gaze flew upwards, to the tree level, where the pine forest was dense and dark, thickly covering the highest point of the island.  He then glanced at the sky, where the clouds were threatening ominously, at the rain coming down faster and harder.  And as much as he wanted to investigate that section of forbidden forest, he knew that it was foolish to do so, after what had just happened.  He was being warned away and there was no telling how many he was up against should he go in there unarmed.  Instead he calmed himself down with extreme effort, still feeling the undercurrents of rage flickering along his skin.  He picked his way carefully back down to the path where his equipment lay scattered and damaged and began to gather it up. 

***

The black eyes lifted from the candles, the tall frame straightening without complaint.

“Is he dead?”

“No.  But I think we scared him enough.  Surely he’ll now accept that the cliffs are dangerous.”

There was silence as the man thought this over.  The candles wavered and flickered, throwing dancing shadows against the wall. 

“We have little time left and none to waste on convincing him to leave.  If he insists on staying, I will make sure he sleeps harmlessly through the celebration.”

“And the Russian?”

“He will be returning to the mainland on the morning ferry, as he has said.”

The man smiled and nodded.  “Then it all continues.”

“As it has ever done, and ever will.”

 

***

 

 

**Chapter 9**

 

Doyle examined the cigarette butt carefully, slowly forming the Russian name on silent lips.  _Sobraine._   Bodie was right, it was fresh and it could only be Petrov who had smoked it, considering the probability of anyone else on the island having access to Russian cigarettes was practically nil.  Which would mean that he wasn’t being held against his will after all.  And, as Bodie pointed out, he would hardly have a year’s supply on him while rucksacking through youth hostels, he’d have to be restocked from somewhere or someone. 

He leaned against the basin and folded his arms.  The bathroom was hardly big enough for two grown men, but Bodie made room by sitting on the edge of the tub, towel wrapped firmly around his waist, absorbed in doctoring a nasty scrape on his shin.

“So it was no accident?” Doyle watched his partner observantly, relieved by Bodie’s easy movement which indicated no serious damage. They kept their voices low and left the tap on in the bath to further muffle sound.

“No accident,” Bodie agreed darkly.  He sponged his shin scrupulously with a clean handkerchief and twisted around to rinse the cloth under the running water.  “Murder if I hadn’t been fast enough.”

“And I always thought it was the Inland Revenue that provoked homicidal tendencies, not Ordnance.”

Bodie grunted, dabbing meticulously, careful to clear dirt from the graze.

“So Petrov is alive and smoking.” Doyle frowned, mulling over his partner’s near miss.

Bodie transferred the cleansed cloth to the back of his neck where it felt like a thousand tiny needles were digging into his skin.  “And apparently allowed on the north face.  Hand me those plasters will you mate.”

Doyle took the box of elastoplast strips, extracted one and tore it open.  “Here, turn around.”

Bodie obediently turned, presenting his broad back for Doyle’s inspection.  Multi coloured bruises, none of them serious, dotted the expanse of pale skin and Doyle pressed a few places experimentally to make sure nothing was broken.  His partner moved uneasily against his ministrations but did not complain.  Doyle smoothed the ends of a plaster against a small, but deep cut on the nape of Bodies neck, and another one in the crease of his left shoulder.

“So if Petrov is here, and is being supplied with cigarettes from home, who is helping him and why?”

“A means to come into the country, under the radar, like the old man thought.” Anger still laced Bodie’s tone.  “A Russian trawler dropping off a couple of KGB agents here and them pretending to be tourists and catching the ferry back to the mainland.”  He thought about the trawler he had seen at breakfast that morning and frowned.  Where had that one been going?  “Someone here would have to be in on it, someone would have to know, nice little sideline to go with raising the sheep do you think?”

“Or just Russian sympathisers?” Doyle carefully smoothed the pad of his thumb over a scratch, decided against applying a plaster and added; “I dunno mate.  I haven’t been approached for anything other than leaping the flames and having it away with Isabel to honour this Beltane thing.”

“Is that what she said?  Sounds like Wiccan to me.” Bodie observed derisively, still in ill humour.  “It’s a cult mate, not a commune.”

Doyle laughed.  “Yeah, right.”

“It’s the in thing these days for university drop outs.  Join a cult and see the world.” 

“Ewan Fraser isn’t a drop out,” Doyle told him about his afternoon observation.  “Nasty piece of work.  Doesn’t like Russians at all.”

“Perhaps Petrov found that out the hard way.” Bodie mused.  “Wonder what his problem is?”

“Russians obviously.  If the kid has really disappeared, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had something to do with it.” 

“Hang around long enough and he might do the same to you,” Bodie warned, shifting slightly.

“Good, then we might finally get off this rock,” Doyle stuck another plaster down, smoothing it out gently. “So what would a meek and mild Ordnance man do after having a near fatal accident?”

The shoulders beneath his hands heaved inwardly.  “Be scared I suppose. Take a handful of aspirins and have an early night.”  He cast a hard eye to the window.  “Although I’d rather be up there finding the owner of that cigarette.”

“I suppose you reported it?”

“To who?” Bodie snorted and tensed as Doyle probed at a bruise on his shoulder blade.  “There’s no law enforcement here, no authority at all.  Just a grouchy old woman, a druid and a bunch of stoned kids.  I told Morag I’d been caught in a bit of a landslide.  Played it down, acted a bit shaken.”

“What did she say?”

“What do you think?  Told me I’d be wise to take the ferry to the mainland and get a doctor to check me over.  It’s like a stuck record.  Told her I’ll think about it and see how I am in the morning.  She seemed relieved.”

At his partners silence, Bodie turned slightly.  Doyle was frowning, disturbed by something.  Bodie arched a brow.  “What?  Can’t party without me?”

Doyle smiled ruefully and closed the packet of elastoplasts.  “Rather party without the nightmares.”

Bodie grinned at him.  “You should just lay back and think of England mate, a dream like that.  See if you can conjure Britt Ekland to go with the rest of them.”

Doyle rolled his eyes but didn’t smile.  “Ta very much.”

Bodie stood up and stepped carefully out of the bath.  “Won’t happen this time, mate.  Can’t dream if you’re not asleep.”

“You don’t think...” Doyle began and hesitated.

“Think what?”

“That... that rubbish you were spouting off about, in the car coming up here.  That film you saw. You don’t think any of that actually happens do you?”

It was Doyle’s hesitancy that stopped Bodie from cracking a lewd joke.  He studied his partner seriously in the dim light from the dangling lightshade, suddenly aware of how much it was bothering him.  “I wouldn’t think so mate.  How could they get away with it?”

Doyle nodded.  “So Petrov still could have just faked his own disappearance and defected then? “

 Bodie shrugged. “Whatever happened to him, someone here had to either help him, or harm him.  They deny he was here, the bracelet proves he was.  Someone knows something Doyle.”

“And it’s up to me to play along and find out.” Doyle stated glumly.   

“Exactly.”  Bodie gathered up his filthy clothes and brushed past Doyle to the door, creaking it open slightly to ensure the corridor was empty.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be watching your back, just in case.”  He stepped out into the corridor and added:  “Nothing else I can do in my traumatised state, is there?”

 

***

 

 

Isla was noticeably absent at dinner, which instantly aroused Doyle’s suspicion.  Just when he’d decided to corner her and find out what the hell she knew about Petrov, she went and did a disappearing act.   He pushed lamb stew around his plate and refused the offer of stewed apples and custard, ignoring his stomach’s empty complaint. It was another girl, Margaret who cleared his dishes away, puzzled at his lack of appetite.  Isabel wasn’t to be seen either.  He lingered at the table, waiting to see if either would turn up but instead Soren appeared, moving to sit at his usual place at the bar.  

Doyle stayed where he was, watching the self described Druid with interest.  The man seemed quite ordinary, if a little scholarly and certainly didn’t seem to fit in with the young crowd who were buzzing again tonight.  This festival must be some big thing if the vibes were anything to go by.  His literary interests leaning more to non fiction and the classics, Doyle knew very little about traditional festivals so he was at a loss to understand the undercurrent of anticipation that hummed around him, although his copper’s instinct suggested a link between it and their assignment.  And yet he couldn’t for the life of him, work out the connection.

Pushing back his chair, he strolled over to the bar to stand beside Soren.  Black eyes watched him approach. 

“They are happy tonight,” Doyle nodded to the crowd.

“Yes, they are eager for the Festival tomorrow.  It is a big day in the ancient calendar and my research has shown that the islands in particular still honour these old traditions.”

“You study this festival?” Doyle asked curiously.

Soren laughed.  “In a way.  I came here to write a thesis.   The old ways fascinate me.  If you are still here tomorrow night, you will see this festival for yourself.”

“Ah, I must take the morning ferry.” Doyle said apologetically.  “I have seen this island, there are others to see, perhaps I will see this old tradition on another island.”

Soren nodded.  “Please yourself, but you’ll be missing a party.”  He looked indulgently around the room.  “It’s a good thing to see young people returning, the island would have died without them.  The festival is their reward.”

“There are no old people?”

Soren looked him over serenely.  “One or two.  They keep to themselves, don’t like incomers you see, don’t want their ways challenged by a new generation.   Much as they try and stop it, they can’t. It’s inevitable.”

“How do they try?” Doyle asked, finally feeling that he might be getting somewhere.

“Oh, intimidation, threats, small things.  If  Ewan Fraser had his way, we’d all be exiled off the island altogether.” He smiled gently, as though holding no grudge against the crofter.  “Change is hard for him.”

Morag appeared in front of them expectantly.

“Mead, thank you Morag,” Soren told her pleasantly and looked at his companion. “What would you like Dimitri?”

Doyle, remembering his intention to stay awake, said hurriedly.  “Not tonight.  I am leaving in the morning, I do not wish sickness on the sea.”

Morag glanced quickly at Soren as though for instructions, but Soren just nodded amiably.  “If you insist, Morag, just the mead then.”

The glass was placed in front of him and the older man raised it in a toast.  “ _Salainte_.”

“ _Zdorovʹya_ ,”  Doyle responded and watched as Soren had no hesitation in sipping the alcohol.  Doyle frowned, wondering again how a mickey finn could be slipped into a drink that the island’s inhabitants all drank with gleeful abandon.  He flicked his eyes back to the table.  Perhaps Bodie was right, and it was in the food, although he wasn’t convinced.  The component would have worked faster for a start, not hours later when he was in bed and he’d experienced no telltale effects the next morning. 

“Tell me about this festival.”

“May Day?”  Soren queried, holding his glass to the light.  “A very old tradition throughout most of Britain but particularly here in the highlands.  It’s the spring festival where the people entreat the god and goddess to give them a prosperous planting.  Leaping the fires left the old behind and started the new, winter to spring if you like.”  He peered benevolently at Doyle over his glass and winked.  “Young people leap the fires and find a secluded patch and nature takes it course.  In times past it was responsible for many a winter baby to be born, an event that was welcomed and considered good luck as it meant the Goddess smiled upon the union.”

“And this is what you do at your festival?” Doyle asked, Isabel’s intentions clearer now.  Bodie’s jokes were closer to the truth than either of them realised. 

“Oh yes, it’s a fun way to break up the year and it reminds the young people that they are part of an ancient line.  There is no harm in asked the old gods to favour the spring planting.”

Doyle couldn’t see what this had to do with Nicholai Petrov, yet he was intrigued all the same.  “But they don’t really believe in it, do they?”

Soren fixed him with an assessing look.  “Only about as much as a Christian believes in his God.”

People were lining up expectantly for mead, the girls giggling, throwing coquettish looks their way.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like one?”  Soren smiled gently at the girls.  “You seem to be quite popular. Should you stay Isabel may have a fight on her claim, and you would bring luck you know.”

“No, thank you.”  Tired of all this tiptoeing around, impatience flared.  “How exactly would a Russian bring luck?”

Soren gazed at him keenly.  “The festival has many paths, many ceremonies, who is to say which is the original and most accurate?  In one version Cernunnos chose a mortal to be the Goddess’s lover.  He was honoured among all who participated.  Men of strength, men of violent backgrounds especially were favoured.  But others as well.   You are not from here.  In the old days men from far away were coveted, as they brought fresh seed to a community that was, by the very nature of their isolation, inbred.”

Doyle was even more baffled.  “How can I be a lover to a Goddess?  She does not exist.”

That glint again, the dark eyes sharp.  “She is all around you Mr Dimitri.  She certainly does exist.”

“I do not understand.”

Soren smiled.  “These days it’s symbolic only.  I’m sure several young ladies would give you a hand, they are obviously all quite willing to accommodate you.  Are you certain you won’t stay for it?”

Suddenly the penny dropped and Doyle had a sudden urge to grab the man by the collar and slam him into the wall.  Symbolic?  This whole desperate need for him to stay was to simply indulge in their delusional belief in an ancient festival?   Their unnatural interest in him was solely to follow some preset formula, which required his cooperation and Bodie’s absence.

It all made sense now.  Bodie after all, represented a form of authority, an authority they didn’t want prying into their pagan activities, whereas he, impersonating a Russian, would hardly be going to boast a willing participation.  Sex in a field with a number of women, for God’s sake.   He gritted his teeth, desperately wanting to lash out. 

The dreams he’d had, the ones that didn’t feel like a dream, all to do with this ruddy festival.  They’d been on the wrong track all along.  It was nothing to do with Petrov at all, well not unless Petrov had been offered the same role the year before. 

Soren smiled at him, misinterpreting his frustrated expression.  “It’s late and I’m keeping you up.  Do think about it won’t you.  Good night, Mr Dimitri.”

Doyle left before he gave into impulse and smashed that vapid expression from the man’s face.  He stood outside the door, damping his irritation down, and his ever fertile mind was soon thinking again, switching direction effortlessly.  Ewan Fraser then.  Isla and Ewan Fraser and whatever they were hiding in his cottage.

The cold in the unheated hallway seemed to sink into his bones and shivering he inserted his key into the lock, preparing himself for a long night.  Bodie’s door was shut and Doyle wondered if his partner was asleep, after all, Bodie had stayed awake the night before, watching out for him.  Wouldn’t he just love this latest development?  Nearly killed in a landslide just to stop him tattling to the authorities about perverted sexual practices in a field.  He twisted the key savagely, thinking they should have swapped roles.  Bodie would have had no scruples, he was sure, justifying his participation on keeping his cover intact.

Abruptly he froze, a sudden itch between his shoulder blades warning that someone was behind him.  He spun around, fists clenched, body automatically crouching ready for attack. 

Blue eyes gazed at him through tangled windblown hair.  Isla.  She darted forward, taking his arm in a tight grip and putting something small and spiky into the palm of his hand. 

“Ye must leave the island,” She hissed, looking around fervently.  “In the morning, ye must take the ferry away from here, I beg ye.  Here, put this under the pillow, and tell no one I give it ye.”

“Wait,” he turned to catch her arm.  “What is going on here?”

She shook him off.  “Leave.  Do ye no ken what will happen to ye?”

“Tell me,” he urged but she shook her head, trying to edge away, darting quick glances towards the door to the main part of the pub.

 “I cannot.  Put the charm under ye pillow and leave in the morning.”

“Isla!”

They both jerked around at the name, Doyle with narrowed eyes and Isla in fright.  Ewan Fraser stood at the end of the corridor, dressed in a dark coat and mud splattered trousers.   He glared at Doyle with open dislike.

“Come Isla.”

“Wait!” Doyle made to stop them again.  “Isla, tell me what is going on, what happened to Nicholai?”

If anything the colour drained even further and she gasped.  “How.. how did ye ken...”

“Isla!” Ewan Fraser roared in fury and took a threatening step closer.  Doyle tensed up, but Isla shook him off and hurried to Fraser’s side.

“One Russian is bad enough.” Fraser glared at him with hate filled eyes.  “Without more turning up.  Ye deserve what is coming to ye.”

Taking Isla’s arm in a firm grip, he steered her determinedly to the end of the corridor and out of the door.  Doyle saw Isla’s anguished look back at him before the door slammed shut.  Bemused, he opened his fingers to see a small bundle of greenery, tied together with several strands of grass like stems.  The smell was heady, strongly wafting up from his hand and penetrating his sinuses with all the pungency of smelling salts.  He wrinkled his nose and hurriedly closed his fist before his eyes started watering.  He had no idea what it was composed of, but it immediately cleared his head.

Behind him Bodie’s door opened a crack and his partner peered out.  “Well, well, well.”

Doyle cocked a brow at him.  “What was that all about?”

“One Russian is bad enough?”  Bodie repeated, pleased.  “He knows where Petrov is.”

Doyle looked dubiously back at the door.  “Well, he certainly knows something.  Him and Isla.”

“Yeah,” Bodie thought about it.  “And whatever it is, it means he’s either hiding or helping him.  And unless he’s a very good actor, he hates Russians, so why would he be hiding or helping him?”

“If it wasn’t for that cigarette, I’d be thinking he’d done him in.”

 

Bodie gave a low whistle.  “And he’s hiding the crime?  Means you might be next you know?”

Doyle rubbed a forefinger reflectively across his bottom lip.  “He had time to do me in at his farm and he didn’t.  No, he’s up to something else and Isla’s involved with it, the cigarettes prove it.  Perhaps we need to come down heavy on her, get her to crack.”

 “First thing in the morning.”  Bodie agreed yawning.  “You may have to miss your ferry mate.  What’s that smell?”

“Oh,” Doyle opened his palm to show Bodie the somewhat crushed charm.  “Isla says to put it under my pillow.”

Bodie eyed it in bafflement.  “What for?  It couldn’t be to soothe you to sleep, not with that smell.”

Doyle shrugged and absently put it into his pocket.  “They seem to have a thing about fragrant plants.”

“That girl at breakfast, she said Isla was a dab hand with the herbs, didn’t she?”  Bodie leaned against the wall.  “Maybe she garnishes the fish in the kitchen as well.”  He yawned and stretched.  “If you stay, you can take part in their festival.”

“Soren told me about it.”  Doyle snorted.  “No wonder they want you gone so badly, jumping fires and getting up to mischief with whoever takes their fancy.  Be a right carry on if someone in authority saw that happening, they’d all be arrested for indecent exposure in a public place.”

“So it _is_ what they want you for!”  Bodie was somewhat scandalised.  “You’ll catch your death mate.”

Doyle rolled his eyes.  “Not likely to tell the authorities though am I?  If Petrov was here last May, I’ll bet you a penny to a pound he was involved in the same thing, no wonder they denied his being here.  It’s like that film of yours, only without Britt Ekland.  Either way it’s a dead end.  We need to concentrate on Fraser, he’s the likely suspect now.”

Bodie grinned.  “I’m all for it, anything to wrap this up and get out of here.”  He pulled the door closed and then paused, opening just enough to issue a soft “sweet dreams”, before leaving it just slightly ajar. 

 Doyle entered his room, carefully locking the door behind him.  He left the key inserted and for added measure placed his rucksack in front of it.  Satisfied he glanced around and made sure the window was securely latched before shedding his jacket and hanging it on the wardrobe door.  If anyone were to try and get in, he’d hear them.  Forgetting all about the small bundle of herbs, he pulled back the covers of his bed and crept gratefully into its warmth fully dressed, propping up the pillows in order to stay awake. 

The room was freshly perfumed from the garland above his bed, emitting pine, and something else he couldn’t identify, something elusively familiar, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  It occupied his mind for a time, but he soon gave it up, turning his mind to the case again.  It seemed more and more likely that Fraser had something to do with Petrov and Isla perhaps knew about it.  Or she was aiding and abetting him.

Calming down, he yawned widely and stared through a crack in the curtains.  He thought he saw a tall man hunched into his coat.  Groggily, he tried to focus, had an inane thought that the man had a greenish tint about him, but suddenly couldn’t keep his eyes open. The familiar odour seemed stronger. He struggled, aware of something terribly wrong but sleep tugged him down and he went willingly.

 

***

 

The voices penetrated first, sweet and high, softly singing in a language he didn’t know.  It was unwelcome and yet vaguely stirring as though recalled from the recesses of his memory.   Then he felt their touch, fingertips whispering - on his skin, his hair, his face, pulling the blankets down, baring him to their inspection, soft feminine hands tracing patterns on his body, tugging at his hair and he mumbled a protest, pulling away, but his arms were raised, insistently, soft silk encircling his wrists and he was helpless.  Like last time. 

His eyes opened and the room was misty, unclear, swirling around the lovely faces above him, all intent on their exploration of him.   Just like last time.  He lifted his gaze, to the pink ribbons binding his wrists to the bedframe.  A small part of his mind that wasn’t fuzzed up suggested that it would be an easy thing to break free.  The fuzzy part of his mind asked him why he’d bother.  A lingering odour fanned over him, sharp, not pleasant but it seemed to focus his thoughts and he frowned, trying to recall what it was.  Then it was gone and lips whispered in his ear, halting words in a low voice, insistent. _Stay, stay with us, honour her with us.. we are all yours if you just stay...stay here with us_.  Doyle closed his eyes again, allowing their touch, his body traitorously responding to the caresses.  It was just a dream, Bodie would have heard them if they were real.  It was just a dream. 

 

***

 

**Chapter 10**

 

Bodie watched the dawn slowly lighten his room, while his ear was to the door.  The hallway was silent, as it had been all night, as it had been the night before.  He wandered to the window for the umpteenth time and checked the street, which was as deserted as the hallway.  He wasn’t tired, at least not yet, his mind churning information at a rate that might have actually impressed Doyle.  Elusive, tantalising glimpses of something important kept skittering across his mind. 

_Like that film of yours but without Britt Ekland._

Bodie moved back to the door, thinking hard.

_Or Cernunnos, if you like.  The God of nature, sexuality, hunting and fertility_

He peered into the corridor again, disquiet niggling down his spine

_If Petrov was here last May, he was likely involved in the same thing._

No sign of Ewan Fraser _._ No sign of anyone.

_One Russian is bad enough, without more turning up._

He glanced at his watch, an hour until the Calmac ferry arrived on its early morning run from Lewis to the mainland.

_Waking the Green Man, waking the Green Man._

Bodie opened the door and stepped into the corridor.  He knocked quietly at number four.  “Doyle?”  There was no answer and he knocked harder, glancing in both directions, wincing at how loud the echo seemed.  However, no-one came to investigate and he stooped slightly, to peer into the key hole.  He could see nothing; the key was still in the lock.  Relieved he straightened up and scrubbed a hand through his hair.  Doyle had probably crashed, not surprising if he’d also stayed awake all night.  At least it was the best excuse for missing the ferry.  Now they could get out to Fraser’s cottage and find out what he knew.  He returned, yawning to his own room and flopped onto the bed, falling into a light doze.

_Ye deserve what is coming to ye._

Bodie jerked awake abruptly and sat up. The room was softly diffused with morning light, his watch confirming that he’d only slept for an hour.  He sat up and looked out of the window, eyes gritty from lack of sleep.  The Calmac ferry was just pulling away from the quay, leaving it empty.  Bodie watched it depart, the stern churning soft white foam from the grey sea.  Another three days before the next ferry, and it struck him again how isolated the island was, how dependent on the twice weekly service the inhabitants must be.  Yet again, he could see no evidence of anyone actually getting on or off the vessel.  It didn’t make sense.  No one island could be that independent, cut off so completely. They’d need doctors, and banks and supplies.  The young people would surely crave cinemas, discos, at the very least a library. 

Sudden fatigue drove him to massage his eyes with his fingers, two nights spent watching Doyle’s back was beginning to take its toll.  A quick bath should wake him up sufficiently 

He rapped on Doyle’s door again on his way to the bathroom.  “Ray, looks like you missed the ferry.”  Again no answer.  He bent, tried to push out the key from the inside of the lock but his finger was too big.  “Sleepyhead,” He grumbled and then raised his voice.  “See you at breakfast then.”

But Doyle didn’t follow him to breakfast.  Their usual table by the window was set only for one and Bodie tiredly glanced at the empty place in front of him, waiting for Isla to come and rectify the error.  A clatter behind him showed not Isla, but Morag.  She gave him her usual look of dislike and then forced a smile.

“What can I get ye this morning then?”

“We need another place,” Bodie pointed to the empty placemat opposite him.  “Mr Dimitri and I usually take our breakfast together.”

“Och, lad, he left on the ferry this morning,” Morag said soothingly. “Didna he tell ye?”

His weariness blasted away instantly, Bodie kept his face bland through sheer force of will, although his chest suddenly tightened and a cold dread swept over him.  “Left?”

“Aye, this morning.” She repeated watching him.  “Said he had other places to go.”

Bodie stared at her, absorbing her blatant lies, as natural as breathing - the old serpent - and forced himself to act unconcerned and yet the fact that she was lying was irrelevant compared to the thought of where his partner was.  “Oh?  Well I suppose he did say he wasn’t staying.  Shame he’ll miss the festival though.”

Morag shrugged dismissively.  “Oh that, it’s just a wee celebration, some singing a bit of drink, nothing to write home about, nothing ye’d need bother with.  Now what can I get ye for breakfast?”

Bodie forced himself to order toast and coffee, forced himself to wait until it was served, forced himself to start eating.  It sat like heavy pellets in his gut.  He left the last piece and downed his coffee in one gulp.

Hurrying back to the guestrooms, he strode down the corridor in time to see the girl Margaret backing out of Doyle’s room, a broom and a mop in her hands.  He walked past Doyle’s room and into his own, where he stood, back against the wall, waiting for the girl to leave. 

Where the hell was he?  Bodie had stayed awake all night, he knew damn well no one had come in or out via the door.  Certain facts blasted into prominence.  The scene on the day they’d arrived, the insistence that Doyle take room four.  Doyle’s assertion that his nocturnal visitors weren’t dreams.  Yet it had taken his partner disappearing from a locked room to have the obvious suddenly become clear.  Bodie could have smacked his head in disgust.  There was another way into that room. 

“Come on, come on” he muttered under his breath at the girl as she took her time bending to use a dustpan and brush.  Finally she gathered her assorted cleaning implements and moved off back towards the bar area.  Bodie was out of his room like a shot and into Doyle’s where he stood looking around.  It looked ordinary, the same as his own, bed neatly made, the pillows fluffed.  Doyle’s belongings were gone.  The wardrobe stood against the wall, heavy old oak, stained a deep glowing brown.  Bodie wrenched the door open.  The back looked solid.  He rapped his knuckles over the wood.  It sounded solid.  He moved across the wall, examining every crack and crevice, but his experience wasn’t enough.  Honest with himself, he figured he could search all day and not hit upon the hidden entrance. 

But how had Doyle allowed it?  His partner was no slouch, if he’d said he’d stay awake, then he would stay awake.  Expecting another intrusion, he would have been on guard yet there had been no noise, no fight, nothing to indicate that someone had come in.  Yet someone undoubtedly had. 

The room was quiet, it smelled fresh, herbal, almost overpowering.  Nose twitching he looked for the source, eyes locating the wreath above the bed and seeing that it was not a dried arrangement, as his was, rather it was new and green with many bits of plants tied in together.  Curious now - why would he have a dried arrangement and Doyle a fresh one - he moved closer.  It hung on a small peg screwed in the stone wall, thick foliage of some sort, exuding a fragrance that he could not begin to identify.  He reached out, removing the wreath from its hook, his attention caught by what that simple act revealed.  It was only small, less than an half an inch in diameter, a small pipe receding into the wall, just below the peg.  The opening was moist and as he watched, a small drip slipped out and fell, landing on the pillow beneath.  Curious he extended a finger, wiped it across the small opening and brought it to his nose.

The effect was instant, sickly sweet, overpowering, pinching the edges of his vision with lassitude and he reeled back staring at the pipe in horror.  They’d come across it before in their line of work, no doubt they would again and oh it would produce strange dreams all right.  Hallucinations more like.  At the very least it would ensure that the person sleeping in the bed would not be able to separate fact from fantasy and Ray might have recognised the smell himself, had it not been heavily disguised by all those fragrant plants in the wreath. 

Bodie threw the circlet with some force against the wall, and stalked from the room, fuse igniting, backed by all the uneasiness he’d felt since they’d set foot on this damn piece of rock.  Petrov had been here, had disappeared and now Doyle had been taken, quite probably in the same way.  It didn’t take a genius to see the connection. 

The pipe was between the walls, Bodie very much wanted to know where it came out and who had fed the liquid into the pipe with the sole purpose of sedating his partner. It was nothing to do with the food or the drink, it was here, in his own bed, so subtle that he hadn’t been aware of it. 

_She’s a dab hand with the herbs_.

Bodie’s fists clenched involuntarily.  No wonder Isla had insisted Doyle have that room. Right from the beginning he was the target, but had Isla taken it upon herself, or had she simply relayed an instruction from someone else?  Morag obviously, or perhaps Fraser?  Or was Isla in the thick of it, right up to her baby blue eyes.  He exited number four into the corridor with quick angry steps.

Number two was another guest room, empty, bed neatly made, dried arrangement hanging above it.  He then stalked outside, checked the outer wall and found nothing.  His gaze lifted to the roof level, something up there then?  Which meant it could be anyone.  But still... why?  Why all that nonsense with enticing him to stay if they were just going to kidnap him anyway?

He returned to his own room and took his surveyors case, snapped the combination and pressed the small button to reveal his hidden gun and ID.   It was time to find the girl.

The cottage at the top of the road looked as it always did, empty, closed up.  Bodie didn’t hesitate.  Striding up the path to the front door, he pounded on it with his fist and kept pounding until he heard the bolt slide free and it reluctantly opened, held in place by a chain.

He expected panic, the blue eyes huge with fright.  What he didn’t expect was an empty space.  Adjusting his gaze downwards he blinked at the small wizened countenance peering through the gap.  Faded blue eyes gazed shrewdly back assessing his face before flicking with faint approval over the rest of him. 

Bodie  leaned down with a menacing air.  “Let me in, or I’ll break down the door.”

The eyes came back to his face, regarding him with a decidedly unimpressed air before the door closed gently.  He waited, waited for what seemed an eternity and just as he was raising his leg to follow through on his promise, he heard the chain withdraw.  Moving forward he pushed the door open roughly, stepping over the threshold into the kitchen with barely contained violence.

An old woman stood aside to let him in, frail arthritic fingers grasping the kitchen bench like a lifeline.

“Where is Isla?” Bodie didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t need to.  It was obvious that he was furious.

“No here Mr Bodie,” the woman answered, her voice dry and papery, the accent so strong he barely understood her.  “She has work to do.”

He resisted intimidating her, alarmed by her frailty.  “Who are you?”

“Ceitidh Agnes Moira Sinclair McPherson.”  She replied gravely.  “Isla is my great granddaughter.”

Her formality put Bodie at a distinct disadvantage and only Doyle’s whereabouts kept his fuse from fizzing out altogether in the face of such dignity.

“Sit down,” he ordered, “Before you fall down.”  He reached out and took her arm, guiding her to a kitchen chair.  The stick thin legs collapsed and the woman let out a relieved breath, peering up at him from under wispy white hair.  Bodie bit back a groan.  His usual interrogation methods useless, he tried instead for civility

 “I’m looking for the Russian and I think Isla knows where he is.”

“Mr Dimitri’s nationality has sealed his fate.”  The woman informed him, quite unafraid of his barely concealed menace.  “He is beyond help now, Mr Bodie.”

“What do you mean?  Are there Russian sympathisers on this island?  Is Isla a communist?  Is she helping them?”  Bodie felt a strong urge to shake the thin shoulders and he jammed his hands in his pockets to resist the temptation.

“Your rudeness is inexcusable _Sassenach,_ ” the woman scolded, drawing herself up with decorum.  ‘My great granddaughter would never do such a thing.”

“Wouldn’t she?” Bodie flung back challengingly.  “Then why does she know Nicholai Petrov so well?  And why is she hiding what she knows about him?  What has Ewan Fraser got to do with this?”

The woman stared at him sternly.  “Do you ken what day it is, Mr Bodie?”

“First of May, Beltane.”  Old woman or not, his temper was simmering again, all this fuss around this bloody celebration.

“Och so ye do have brains to go with that pretty face.  Aye, tis Beltane.  A special day for our ancestors.  A day to honour the Earth Goddess and her consort, the Horned One.  The chosen one....”

Bodie had had just about enough of this superstitious nonsense.  “Spare me the mumbo jumbo, lady.  I’ve had it up to here with the Horned one, believe me.”

She tilted her head on one side.  “Are ye going to listen, _Sassenach_ or are ye going to go off half cocked.”

He glared at her. 

“She had no choice ye ken.  For what follows Beltane, Mr Bodie?”  She waited expectantly but Bodie was blank.  What in god’s name was she rambling on about?

“Sambhain.  Sambhain follows Beltane.  When Summer turns to Autumn, the old, the infirm, the non productive are slaughtered to ensure there is enough food to feed the healthy through the long winter.”   She gestured to herself.  “Isla is the keeper of the Stones.  She had nae choice, do ye see?”

“Stones?”  Bodie repeated blankly.

“On the northern tip of the island.” She dropped her voice and leaned forward solemnly.  “They’ll be waking the Green Man. He’ll be wanting his sacrifice.”

He stared at her, but her gaze was steady, her lips firmly pressed together.  _Waking the Green Man._

He didn’t hear anymore.  He was running out the door, through the gate and back to the village.  A vague part of him acknowledged the weather had closed in, the street indistinct and patchy with an incoming sea mist.   Sound echoed eerily as he ran past silent cottages, grey and shadowed.   The Oban police had told him that the emergency radio was located in the office of the only public building on the island and Bodie hoped to God it was working.  The pub loomed, the sign above still and ominous, with the peeling green paint outlining the shape of a man.  _Am Fear Uaine_.  

Bursting in through the door he headed for the counter, startling the girl Margaret.  “Where is Morag?”

“In the office.” She stammered, frightened by the look on his face.  “At the back, near the kitchen.”

Bodie stormed through the rear door and found the study by sheer guesswork.  Morag wasn’t there however, but Soren was, relaxing in a deep leather armchair, gazing out of the window.  He turned slowly, untroubled by Bodie’s abrupt entrance.

“Mr Bodie?”

“Where is Morag?” Bodie demanded without greeting.

The man was slow to comprehend.  “Morag?  I believe she is visiting her brother.” 

“Brother?” Bodie couldn’t imagine the sour old woman having a parent, never mind a brother.

“Yes, Ewan Fraser.” He looked Bodie over curiously.  “Can I help you?”

Bodie’s lips thinned.  Morag and Ewan Fraser.  It was starting to make sense now.  “I need to use the radio.”

Soren blinked up at him, confused.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I know you have an emergency radio.  Small place like this with no phones, you’d have to have some alternative contact with the mainland.”

“Oh, I see, yes there is.  It’s only short range, just to the police in Oban actually.  Why...”

Bodie interrupted, impatience flaring.  “I need to use it.”

“But...”

“It is important.”  He had little patience for the vague bewilderment on the face before him.  Likely the man had been smoking some of his weed, wouldn’t know Saturday from Wednesday.

Bodie’s menace must have finally penetrated the cannabis haze for Soren finally stood up to open a wood panelled door in the cupboard behind the desk.  The transmitter was nestled inside, wires coiling serpentine around the device.  Bodie picked up the headphones and turned the set on.

 

***

 

Sergeant McIvor was transferring meticulous details of a break and enter on to a report sheet when his Constable stuck his head through the door. 

“Excuse me sir, there’s an urgent call come in from Eilean Rutha.  The Ordnance man.  He wants us to pass a message on to his head office asap.”

“Constable, this is a police station, no the telegraph exchange.”

“Aye I realise that sir, but he did say as it was urgent and the next ferry doesna stop till next week.”

McIvor sighed heavily.  “What’s the message?”

“He says that the measurements are vastly out, but he canna do more until he gets back up.  Can his boss arrange a flight instead?”

“And all at taxpayers expense nae doubt,” McIvor huffed indignantly.  “What’s his boss’s name?”

“Er.. George Cowley sir, here’s the number.  It’s in London.”

Sergeant McIvor took the number off his subordinate and set it aside, returning doggedly to his report.

 

***

**Chapter 11**

 

 

Bodie left the office at a run, heading up the slope to the fields separating the village from the forest. 

The sea fog had truly set in and visibility was patchy, thick as pea soup one minute and wispy and translucent the next.  He was forced to slow considerably once he entered the pine, wary of turning an ankle on the uneven ground.  He stopped frequently to listen, to pinpoint his position with the soft murmur of the sea, all senses alert for possible pursuit.  The canopy of pine and elm, birch and alder grew denser as he pushed uphill, past the white bee boxes, deserted and quiet.  Bodie stopped abruptly and drew his gun.  He could hear nothing, no bird song, no hum of bees, no footfalls, even the song of the sea diminished to a barely audible hiss.  He moved forward slowly, carefully, pushing even further uphill, past the point of the landslide, eyes darting in all directions.  A slight breeze eddied around him, whispering coldly against his ears and the mist stirred sluggishly.  The sound of the sea came back, stronger now, pulsing with the movement of waves against rocks.  The trees here were taller, older, the thin needles starting to drip moisture.  He stepped forward and without warning the ground descended beneath his feet.  Abruptly jerking back he waited, his left arm wrapped around the trunk of the tree beside him.  The mist swirled, eddied around his feet and he saw a drop, only small but it led steeply down to sudden rocks and the sound of the waves grew stronger.  Bodie’s heart was racing.

_Lose their way in the sea mists._

Now he saw how easily it could happen.  Doubts flitted rapidly, one after the other as he stared down the cliff face.  A group of cannabis smoking hippies, an old demented woman and a man who hated Russians.  Could have nothing to with Petrov, after all.  Except for Doyle being missing, he told himself sternly.  That was something in common with the elusive Nicholai.  Backing up he turned to cross the terrain at an angle.  Perhaps he was just slightly off centre.  Slightly off centre to what?   He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.  Or what he’d find. 

He was careful of his footing, stepping cautiously over small mounds, square depressions from the digging of peat, skirting brambles and blackberry bushes.  He made his way into what he hoped was the centre of the high point but his path was unexpectedly blocked by the appearance of a sheer wall of rock, the sort that appear randomly through hilly country.  Cursing he followed the base, running his hand along the rock for guidance, watching his feet for any smaller rocks or boulders that may have fallen.  The ground was wet, uniform brown, the undergrowth decaying from the recent winter.  Lichens and moss crept over the exposed rocks in patterns and swirls of bright green.  A flash of yellow caught his eye and he crouched down to see another cigarette end.  He held it up to the misty light, seeing the same letters, _Sobraine._

Instantly he stood still, nostrils flaring, senses alert, taking in his surroundings.  The faint smell of ashes teased his palate  and eyes narrowing, he glanced around, waiting as the rocks wavered in and out of the mist.  There was a hollowed out section, a crack in the wall providing a narrow lean to, similar to what he had sheltered in during the landslide.  He drew his weapon carefully, moving towards the shelter.  The blackened remains of a fire explained the smell.  A sleeping bag was rolled up, next to a small khaki coloured bag.  Bodie looked around, listening intently but knew there was no one here.  Bending down, he flipped open the flap of the bag and saw provisions, the sort used by armed forces, the content descriptions on each one in unmistakable Russian.  Bodie stood up quickly.  Petrov?  He’d been camped up here while they were on the island, waiting for them to go?  So he wasn’t being held prisoner then, Doyle was right, he was defecting, faking his disappearance.  But then what had that got to do with Doyle going missing.

A knocking sound came suddenly through the trees and he stopped again, listening intently.  The mist swirled confusingly and he lost the direction.  A minute or so later, he heard it again and he turned uncertainly uphill, instinctively following it.  The undergrowth was longer here, grass knee high and small trees, offspring of the tall pines around him hindered his progress.    

Pushing carefully through some lower brambles he stopped and his head rose in amazement.  A stone, narrow, ancient, covered in soft grey and green lichen.  It soared up, it’s surface covered in decorative swirls, giving a vague impression of petrified wood.  Bodie reached out to touch, almost expecting warmth from that deceptive pattern but the stone was cold under his hand.  He squinted through the mist and the knocking sound came again, this time with a soft growl of human dissent.  He moved sideways, carefully, gun aimed forward, barely taking ten steps before he came across another stone, same as the first.  Realisation dawned.  It was a henge.  A stone circle.  He found his bearings, realising that the forest abruptly stopped at the edge of the stones and he took a chance, creeping steathily forward toward the knocking noise.

It emerged slowly from the mist, taller than the stones, large around the base.  He stopped, eyes widening in shock.  It towered over him, a large effigy, made of some sort of sticks, branches, interwoven, entwined so that it resembled a man.  A wicker man.  Bodie's stunned expression remained as his mind tried to assimilate what his eyes were informing him.  How long must it have taken them to make?  It was probably three times his height and in the belly of the creation was a cage.  A cage with bars.

Christ, it all slotted into place.  Doyle’s disappearance, the fire festival of Beltane, the pagan ceremonies of spilling seed to the ground, honouring the Goddess.  The chosen one.  They were going to sacrifice Doyle to the fires of Beltane, in the belly of the wicker man.  He had to find his partner and quickly.

 Too late he felt the quiet presence behind him and he began to turn.  But pain exploded in his skull, red fire flashed across his eyes, and then darkness.

 

***

 

He selected the candles with careful consideration and placed them on the points drawn in chalk on the stone floor.  Five for the points of the star, four small ones for each season, the compass points and the four winds.  Two for the God and Goddess.  Sitting in a circle around the pattern on the floor were seven young women, all dressed in white robes. Marijuana hung heavy in the air.

“Cernunnos has chosen,” he said slowly and with formality.  “The young Russian will spill his seed for the Goddess.”

He drew another symbol into the circle.  “Your task is to help him.  Do not anger the Horned One.”

The door behind him opened, causing a draft that set the candles to sputtering.  He waited, staring at the flames as the intruder came forward, bent to whisper to him.

Annoyance flashed briefly across his face.  “He saw it?”

“Aye.”

“Then there is no help for it, tomorrow we will inform the authorities of his mishap on the cliffs.  Ensure he does not escape.”

The man nodded and left, departing quietly.  Thoughtfully he drew another symbol onto the floor.

 

***

 

 

Voices penetrated first, one with an accent he knew well.  Russian.  Some small part of his mind told him that it was important but vivid dreams convinced him he was imagining it.  The Russian accent went on, while his mind spun crazily, bright swirling colours painting images of Cowley, of Bodie, of Clare in her nurse’s uniform, bending over him in the Carnaby Street brothel.  And Isla, all disapproving in the background while Ewan Fraser set his dog on a tall blond man with light blue eyes.  He tried to rouse himself, but his eyes felt glued down.

The Russian accent was interspersed with a soft woman’s voice now.  It was eerily similar, harsh to ears unaccustomed to the nuances of lilt and cadence of the seldom heard language.  Gaelic, not Russian.  He must have been mistaken.  He’d dropped off to sleep and they were back in his room.  He stirred slightly, wanting to catch them in the act, prove to Bodie that his nightly tormentors were no dreams, but he was having immense difficulty waking up.

“Ach, wee fool, ye no put that charm under ye pillow did ye?”

The voice was scolding, angry and he nearly smiled, picturing the face that the voice belonged to, but abruptly twisted away as a strong odour assaulted his nasal passages. 

“Breathe it in.” The voice commanded and having little choice, he did, coming awake coughing and spluttering.  The rainbow colours lingered, swirling over the rock walls and ceiling.  Something dark wafted under his nose again, the strong scent making his eyes water and he turned fully onto his side, blinking rapidly, trying to focus.  The long blond hair and huge blue eyes were expected if a little fuzzy.  Isla.  Groaning he brought his hands up, rubbing at his eyes.

“Wake up man, tch ye are no use at all.”

Doyle leaned up on his elbows, the room spinning. “I was dreaming.”

“Hmph.  That’s no surprising.  Are ye awake now then?”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” he vowed, sniffing and blinking, trying to rid his nasal passages of that overpowering herb.  Pushing his hair away from his face he finally brought his gaze on the girl and saw her concern.  “I’m alright.”

“Ye’re no alright, but there is little else I can do for ye, till the drug is out ye’re system.

Doyle hauled himself upright, swung his legs around and a loud clattering noise drew his gaze to his feet.  A shackle, tight around the cuff of his jeans.  Head still swimming alarmingly, his eyes followed the attached chain to a bolt in the stone floor.  The bolt looked ancient, large, slightly rusty, unlike the chain which sported the dull grey of newness.

His mind finally catching up with events, he gestured angrily to the chain, remembering just in time his cover.  “What’s going on?”

“I ken ye isna Russian Mr Dimitri,” the girl said scathingly.  “There’s no need to strain yeself.”

So she _had_ heard his slip the other day in the breakfast room.  He wasn’t up to playing guessing games with her, but was annoyed nonetheless.  “If you knew why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Anger stirred again, a far cry from the timid, frightened girl he’d encountered previously.  “I did everything I could to make ye leave the island, stubborn fool and now look where ye’ve ended up.  Why did you no listen to me, aye?  Ye need to eat, I have some food, sit up properly and eat, it will clear ye head.”

Vision sharpening he took in his surroundings.  He was some sort of cave, cold and damp, sitting on a rough camp bed.  Straw rustled under his feet.  Isla hovered just out of his reach, a lantern by her feet.  To his right was his rucksack, his jacket, all his belongings.  He squinted seeing another one, larger than his.  It was leaning against the wall, next to a similar one of khaki green.  He frowned slightly, trying to make out the flag stitched on the outside but it was too dark and his vision wasn’t yet fully cooperating.  “Where am I?”

He looked at her again.  The anxiety was back and she was fiddling with her pendant.  “The strongrooms.  Norsemen once lived here, they used these natural caves for stores.  They are beneath the village.”

“Ok.”  He took a deep breath trying to evict the cotton wool from his head.  “Why am I here?”

“For the festival.”  She sounded hopeless.

“I don’t understand.”  And he didn’t.  “Where is Nicholai Petrov?”

Guiltily she looked at the other rucksack against the wall. 

Doyle followed her gaze.  “That’s his?”

She nodded curtly.

“And the other?”

“A German, I didna ken his name.”

“You knew he was here?”

Nodding again she gave him a defiant look. “I love him.”

“Who?  Nicholai you mean?”

“Aye and he loves me back.  He didnna want to go back to Russia.  His father wished him to be a spy.  He didna want to.  He just wanted to be free.  Why couldna he?  Why could he no choose his own path?”

Impatience flared, fuelled by lack of food and the lingering after effects of whatever drug they’d somehow slipped him.  “What happened to him, Isla?”

Her eyes, teary, distressed, gazed pleadingly at him as she whispered, “He was chosen for _am Fear Uaine.”_ Seeing his incomprehension, she translated, “The Green Man.”

A sudden shadow loomed and with a startled gasp she shrank back.   Doyle turned his head.  The tall hunched shape of Ewan Fraser appeared into the lantern light, his black eyes moving without sympathy over the prisoner.

“So, Mr Dimitri,” he said and smiled coldly.  “Are ye ready then, to honour the Horned One?”

 

***

 

 

Bodie’s head was throbbing, sending slivers of agony through the back of his skull. He lay quite still while he grew accustomed to the pain, his ears picking out a crackling sound and the low murmur of the sea.  Some sort of gold light was flickering against his eyelids.  Fire?  With a groan he forced them open.  Straw scratched his face, tickled his sinuses and without warning he sneezed explosively.  The resultant pain in the back of his head had him breaking out in a sweat, nausea churning his stomach.  He panted softly, waiting for it to subside, brain assimilating what he could see in the meantime.    

He was lying on his side and it was no surprise to feel both his wrists and ankles tied.  The flickering was indeed fire, he could see three or four of them, sparks flaring from their blue hearts to spiral up into the uncaring sky. Illuminated, the standing stones soared like silent, watchful guardians.  He thought he caught a faint whiff of fuel, possibly paraffin.  The nausea settled slightly and Bodie cautiously turned his head, seeing the bars, seeing the wooden framework.  Oh yeah, he was in the wicker cage.  And no Britt Ekland either. 

The dust from the straw rose up around him, threatening another sneeze as he struggled to a sitting position and inched closer to the bars of his cage.  Darkness had fallen, although tendrils of fog remained, not quite as thick as before, but still there.  He could see the entire clearing now, circled by the ring of stones, bordered by the tall trees.  Fires were spaced between the stones, burning merrily.  He could see no one in the immediate vicinity but could hear a distant chanting.  Leaning his forehead against the bars he closed his eyes for a minute steadying the sudden dizziness while he flexed his arms.  He was strong, arms corded with muscle but the ropes held firm.  He strained again, but no joy.  The singing grew closer.  He opened his eyes and waited, unable at the moment to do anything else.

Lights were appearing through the mist, dancing flames held high and a procession filed in to stand at the edge of the circle of stone.  Women wearing white flowing dresses and carrying aloft flaming torches of fire.  Singing harmoniously they moved to stand in a semi circle, facing the effigy in which Bodie was imprisoned.  He recognised Isabel, Margaret, little chubby Diana, others who had been in the pub, excited and giggling.  Behind them another line of figures appeared, also holding aloft brands.  Duncan, the bar attendant, John who had been smoking the bees, Jamie with the dark hair, others.   Head throbbing Bodie squinted, wondering for a minute if he was hallucinating. They were swaying now, still singing, oblivious of him in his cage, as though he wasn’t even there.

“Hey!” he yelled.  “Hey, let me out, let me out.”

He was totally ignored, the swaying and chanting more and more pronounced and he had a fleeting image of Edward Woodward in that film he’d told Doyle about, standing in the belly of a wicker man yelling his defiance as they set fire to it.  Jesus Christ.  They wouldn’t... they couldn’t.  It’d be murder.   

The thought, no matter how unbelievable sent him wriggling closer to the bars, looking for the way out.  There was a door of sorts, made of the same material as the rest of the structure, lashed with ropes all around the frame.  More held it closed.  If he turned he might be able to undo the lower ties but the upper...he glanced up seeing the knots higher than he could reach while his hands were tied.

Sudden movement outside brought his attention back to the people around the fires.  They had parted now and someone else was being led to the centre of the stones, to the solitary fire burning there.  The golden light from the flames fell full on his face, highlighting unruly curls and wide green-blue eyes.  Doyle.  Bodie scanned his partner urgently.  Doyle was coatless, his arms behind his back, suggesting he was bound as well but he appeared quite unharmed if uncharacteristically sluggish in his movements.  His two escorts remained by his side, holding him by his arms.

“Doyle!”  Bodie pushed his face against the bars.  “Doyle!”

But Doyle appeared not to hear him. He stood where he had been led, passively by the fire, swaying slightly in time with the chanting and Bodie realised with horror that Doyle seemed as spaced out as the young people around him.  Christ, what in God’s name were they on?  The chanting was getting louder now, building to a crescendo and without warning abruptly ceased.  Behind Doyle shadows danced against the flames and an apparition appeared, melting from the forest - a figment from Bodie’s nightmare.  Tall, lean, totally naked, his skin as green as the trees around them, and his head... his head was that of a stag, complete with a large set of antlers.  Bodie’s mouth went dry.  If he’d had any doubts as to his fate, or that of Doyle’s, this certainly sealed it – and his partner likely had no idea at all. 

He watched, spellbound as the apparition skirted Doyle and moved to the other side of the fire where he stood, resplendent, the centre of attention.  Everyone except Doyle immediately bowed in total reverence.  As if he were truly the entity that they utterly believed him to be.  They must be stoned out of their minds and that wasn’t good, in fact it was about as lousy as you could get.  You couldn’t reason with a person off his tree on narcotics, they were delusional, unpredictable, wired - oh they’d tried plenty of times before with drug users, especially Doyle whose high moral code compelled him to at least try, and nearly got their heads blown off for their efforts.

The dour form of Morag followed to stand beside Cernunnos.  She carried a barrel and a small hammer which she set it down on the grass, smashing in the top with a practiced well aimed hit.  A cup dipped, came up dripping and she skirted the fire to Doyle, holding it up to his mouth, her free hand clasping the back of his head urging him to drink. 

“No, Doyle don’t drink it.” Bodie yelled over the crackling of the flames, the whisper of the sea and the low mindless humming that had started up again.  But Doyle did, obeying the command like an automaton.  He drank clumsily and the mead ran down his throat, soaking his shirt.  Morag watched him and her face was no longer friendly, it was hard and vindictive.  Doyle gazed past her obliviously.

“Doyle for Christ’s sake.”  Frustration tore at him, knowing he was wasting his breath.  His partner was as unaware of him as the rest of them seemed to be.  Drugged to the nines, biddable, uncharacteristically compliant to their commands.  “Bloody hell Ray,” Bodie whispered, frantically trying to think past his pounding head to figure a way out of this mess. 

The Horned one was now raising his arms high and Bodie caught a glint of silver, catching the spark and fire of the flames.  A watch, Doyle’s watch.  The other hand held something dark, curling, what Bodie at first thought were fibres, fine rope perhaps, but then realised was hair, Doyle’s hair.  He held them both aloft and the chanting started again, building to a fever pitch before both were flung into the flames.   

The Green Man gestured to the white clad young women and as one they moved towards Doyle, halting in front of him and it was Isabel who stepped forward, triumphant.  Reaching up she kissed his unresisting mouth, stroked his shoulders, ran her fingers through his hair before moving to the buttons on his shirt.  Doyle stood compliant, allowing the molestation while Bodie watched in disbelief.  God they were really going to go through with it. 

It wasn’t funny now, not now he knew the true purpose of the ceremony, the end result.  Whatever they’d fed Doyle, whatever it was that kept him submissive wasn’t likely to hinder his ability to rise to the occasion, not with that sort of stimulation, anyway.  The other young women followed her lead, until Doyle was hidden from view. 

But then, suddenly they were reeling back with cries of alarm, falling and Doyle, hands free, was sprinting for the Green Man, his face no longer a blank mask, but focussed and deadly.  Bodie caught sight of Isla clad in a white robe, stumbling backwards, knife in hand. 

“Isla,” he yelled, “Isla.”  But in the uproar she didn’t hear him.  Instead she moved further away from the commotion.  He watched as she reached one of the giant stones, the rising heat haze from the flames distorting his vision but he thought he saw a tall blond man reach for her, pull her out of sight.  Bodie froze, squinted.  For a minute there.....   A burst of motion snapped his attention back to his partner.  Doyle was fast, faster than nearly anyone Bodie knew and he had leapt the flames of the central fire, intent on the naked figure standing with unconcerned disdain, the dead deer’s eyes glowing in the flickering light.   

Duncan reached out, latched on to Doyle and Doyle shook him off.  Cernunnos finally stirred to point imperiously at Doyle and more men obediently turned, heading him off.  Doyle was now grappling with three of them, while the Horned one himself reached out to take a burning torch from one of his followers.  He advanced purposely on Doyle, swinging the brand and Doyle reacted instantly, kicking out, knocking the torch from his hand.  It flew through the air, landing a foot or so away and immediately a flash of sparks burst from the impact.  It ran, like liquid gold along a predetermined line, straight towards Bodie in his prison, and the wood, which should have been too wet to burn, instantly caught fire.  Bodie caught another whiff of paraffin on the resultant wave of heat and crucially aware of his own situation, went instantly into action.  

Spinning his body around, he lined himself up, feet first towards the door.  Drawing his knees up to his chest, he lashed out, kicking with every ounce of strength in his powerful legs.  The door shuddered but held.  He drew his knees up again and lashed out.  The impact jarred up his bones, but still the door held.  Again and again he did it, breathing heavily, the smoke getting thicker, wafting into his prison, choking, blinding.  Coughing violently he drew his legs up for one more, gave a forceful kick with both legs and felt the framework crack.  Turning on his side, eyes streaming, choking, he gasped, shoving his face into his shoulder, trying to avoid inhaling any more smoke.  Heat rose from the pyre beneath him, sweat broke out between his shoulder blades, around his waist, drying almost immediately as the hot air wafted through his prison starving the air of oxygen.  His vision was wavering, black spots dancing across his watering eyes.  Behind him the framework of the door was brutally wrenched away and a figure blocked the flames.  Bodie looked up through swimming vision.  Doyle....

Hands reached for him, hauled him round, pulled him out through jagged, splintered pieces of wicker and pine and he half fell, half stumbled to the ground, coughing violently.  A voice was shouting urgently at him and the words didn’t make sense. Not Doyle then.  It took Bodie half a minute to realise the shouting was in Russian.  Petrov, he thought groggily, recalling the tall blond man at the stones with Isla.  He’d been here all along, Christ they’d really bollocks this one up, had it all wrong from the start.  But before he could formulate anything remotely resembling coherent speech, his bonds were cut and he was roughly turned over, blinking up rapidly to see not the young boyish face of Nicholai Petrov, but the scarred, harsh visage of Stasik Zelenko. 

That Zelenko was just as startled to see him would be an understatement.  “ _No gde zhe Nicholai?”_

“Yeah well, sorry to disappoint you,” Bodie gasped, coughing violently, responding to the stunned expression rather than the snarled incoherent verbalisation.  He was abruptly pushed back to the ground and Zelenko had an arm across his windpipe, a bad move as Bodie was already starved for oxygen.

“Where is Petrov?”

 Behind Zelenko the wicker man burst into flames, roaring and crackling, the heat suffocating as it rolled over them and it struck Bodie that they were far too close to the burning structure.  He brought his hands up feebly in an effort to dislodge Zelenko’s crushing grip.

“You tell me and we’ll both know,” he managed around his throat restriction.  Black spots were dancing across his vision and where the hell was Doyle?  Then, as if the thought had summoned him, a slim blur of fury came out of nowhere, tackling Zelendo side on and they both fell sprawling to the ground.  Bode rolled onto his side, deafened by the roar of the pyre, feeling his skin blistering from the intense heat.  The flaming fireball that was the wicker man was beginning to collapse.  A large section of burning framework fell alarmingly close to his left leg and he jerked reflexively away.

Struggling to hands and knees, he staggered upright, began to stumble away.  Immediately he was supported, a familiar figure darting under his arm and taking his weight.  Still coughing, Bodie allowed Doyle to help him to the base of one of the stones.  He sank down, leaning his back against the cold surface and surveyed the clearing with watering eyes.  Chaos reigned.  Morag was staring aghast at the burning effigy, others were stumbling about vacant eyed and bewildered.  Of the Horned one, there was no sign.  Nor was there of Zelenko.

“Where is he?” Bodie croaked, voice raw.  Gentle hands cradled his head; narrowed green blue eyes looked him over intently. 

“Who?”   Doyle was slick with sweat from the heat of the fires, soot blackened shirt clinging damply to shoulders and arms, curls limply plastered to forehead and neck.  There was no evidence of the zombie state he’d displayed earlier.

 “Zelenko.”  Bodie tried to stand, but Doyle pushed him down.

“Stay put for God’s sake.  Are you hurt?”

Bodie shook his head, coughed again and looked in the direction of the Wicker Man, now an unrecognisable blazing mass of wreckage.

“I’m going after him,” Doyle said fiercely, “Stay here.”

Then he was gone.  Bodie leaned his head back and tried to produce saliva for his parched lips.  Swallowing dryly he closed his eyes, concentrating on filling his starved lungs with oxygen.

The crackling roar of the inferno was dying down now, and he could hear the disconnected murmurs of bewilderment coming from the festival’s participants, milling like lost sheep now that their God had disappeared.  Listening abstractly he suddenly heard the voices change, change from bewilderment to excitement.  Nerve endings tingled warningly and Bodie’s eyes shot open.  

He was leaning over him, tall frame bent slightly, his nakedness disconcertingly close and the dead eyes of the deer’s head seemed to stare right through him.  In the creature’s right hand was a knife, long wicked looking, gleaming silver in the dying flames.  Bodie’s eyes widened in comprehending alarm.

 

***

 

 

**Chapter 12**

The mist still swirled making his headlong sprint down the hill foolhardy.  Doyle slowed significantly, forcing himself to caution, listening instead.  He could still hear distant voices from the stone circle, the faint crackling of the fires, smell the smoke, but his attention had moved away from that now, centred solely on the KGB agent.  Where would the bastard go?  To the village?  Unlikely, Zelenko had up to this point kept himself hidden from the villagers and Bodie had found the cigarette butt up near here. 

They should have realised, he thought furiously, should have realised that the KGB would have tracked Petrov down, same as they had themselves. Particularly, he added with some bitterness, if George Cowley had helped them on the way.  Why, was just another mystery that surrounded the head of CI5.  Why did Cowley do half the things he did?  Not for the first time, Doyle thought that being fully in the picture before an assignment just might be a novelty. 

Slowing sensibly to a stop, senses straining to locate the fleeing KGB agent, he realised that something about the whole thing was still bothering him.  Would Zelenko have guessed Petrov’s fate after witnessing Bodie’s close call tonight, realised the young man he’d been sent to retrieve was dead.  And if he did, why did he rescue Bodie?  Who did he think it was, locked up in the belly of the wicker man?  Doyle’s mind whirled even faster in an effort to untangle the strands of this bizarre web.  And none of it was logical.  None of it had ever been logical but ever since Isla had told him of the young Russian’s fate, something had niggled at him.

_I love him and he loves me._

Love, not loved.  Doyle’s eyes narrowed.  Slip of the tongue, or just confusion in her obvious fright.  Present tense, not past tense.  Did that mean that Petrov was still alive?  The Russian voice he thought he’d heard in the caves while still under the influence of the drug...

A branch snapped to his left and he turned swiftly, mind back on his hunt, cautious, stepping carefully, horribly aware of being unarmed.  A slight breeze brushed the cooling sweat on his skin, he could hear the sea again, tossing restlessly against rocks far below and realised he was near the cliff edge. 

A slight static sound echoed from his left followed by Russian words, spoken quickly and harshly.  Doyle angled in the direction of the voice, adrenaline surging, fingers itching to close around his Browning.

He stepped slowly through grass and heather attempting to be as silent as possible and gradually the silhouette of the Russian appeared through the thinning mists.  He held a RT unit close to his ear, listening.

 

“ _YA gotov_ ” Zelenko muttered and switched the unit off.

“Hold it.” Doyle commanded, stepping into view and the KGB agent turned swiftly.  He shot a feral smile at Doyle and without hesitation turned and leapt from the cliff. 

“Shit,” Doyle rushed forward, stopping precariously close to the edge of the precipice.  He looked down into the darkness, mist swirling in the slight breeze and then there was a sudden clear patch and he saw the lights of a boat, a trawler, in the small cove below.  Before he could get a proper identification, the mist closed in again and it was gone.

Swearing under his breath, resigned to the fact he could have done nothing anyway unarmed, he turned to retrace his steps to his partner.

 

***

 

The knife came hurtling down and Bodie’s hand shot out, latching onto the arm preventing the strike.  Breath he didn’t have whooshed out of him as the man proved far stronger than he looked.  The Horned One leaned into the assault, not a sound escaping from behind the unnerving deer’s head and Bodie twisted, trying to break the grip on the knife.  Bloody hell, the man’s arms were slippery, he couldn’t get a good purchase, the green tint smearing, coming off, coating his hands.

Abruptly the weight was wrenched off him, and Bodie surged to his feet ready to fight for his life.  He looked up, menacingly, straight into the unfriendly face of Ewan Fraser.  He was holding the Green Man firmly in capable hands, the knife had dropped to the ground but the threat had passed, the aggressor now docile, hands by his side.

Confused, Bodie looked from one to the other and Fraser scowled at him.  Reaching up he pulled the deer’s head from the Green Man’s shoulders and flung it contemptuously aside, revealing the flushed and brilliant eyed countenance of Soren. 

“Ye thought it was me?” Fraser queried irritably.  “Tch, _Sassenachs_ , ye are all the same.”

Bodie glared at Soren, but the man was smiling serenely, eyes bright, high as a kite, Bodie realised with disgust.

“She is still waiting,” Soren said calmly.  “The Goddess awaits her lover, Cerunnos awaits his sacrifice.  Otherwise it will fail, all fail.”

Fraser casually backhanded him.  “Be quiet blasphemer.  Ye have no idea of our lady, nor her consort.”

Bodie rounded furiously on Fraser.  “You knew.  If you knew all along, why didn’t you stop it?”

Fraser regarded him blandly.  “I just did.”

The fire was dimming now, glowing embers amongst blackened logs.  Overhead a few stars peeped through the lifting fog.  He watched as Soren and his followers were gathered up, meekly obeying the instructions from Ewan’s helpers and Bodie recognised them as the men who had left Isla’s cottage that night.  Muffled steps approached from behind, but he didn’t react, he knew who it was.  He’d know his partner’s presence anywhere.

Doyle came up beside him and followed his gaze.  “Stoned, the lot of them.  Wouldn’t have a clue what they were doing.”  He peered at Bodie critically.  “You look like a black and white minstrel.”

“You can talk.”  Bodie turned and spat, cleared his throat.  Gesturing to the front of Doyle’s jeans, he croaked, “Thought you were supposed to be fertilising the ground or something?”

Doyle made a face and glanced over his shoulder, as though looking for something...or someone.  “Yeah, well, this island couldn’t cope with that sort of fertility, mate.”

Bodie rolled his eyes.  “Zelenko?”

Doyle cocked a brow at him. “Took a high dive without a parachute.”

“He what?”

“Jumped from the cliffs.  There was a boat waiting for him.  Probably the one that brought him here.” 

Bodie groaned.  “Cowley’s going to love that.”

“Yeah,”   Doyle rubbed his nose, smearing more soot over his face, then shrugged philosophically.  It occasionally happened, no matter how good they were, after this night he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

“Someone brought you up to speed,” Bodie noted wearily.  “Isla, I’m guessing?”

Doyle nodded and cast a scathing glance at the self proclaimed Druid.  “Bloody lunatic.  Had his place of power here didn’t he, recruiting susceptible students from his teaching days, tripping on LSD, smuggling in the stuff  to put in his mead.  Sodding King of the Castle.  Only he so fancied himself as the Druid and keeper of the old ways, he decided to incorporate them into his kingdom.  The Beltane tradition of burning a chosen one in a wicker man to ensure a good crop, for instance.”  He tilted his head consideringly.  “Or in his case, a good flowering to produce more honey.”

“Yeah well, a good flowering is bound to come from your sacrifice mate.”

“Deflowering you mean.  I could have done all of them and still had some to spare,” Doyle boasted.

Bodie stared hard at his partner.  Doyle was fidgety.  Nothing new there, Doyle often was, as though his body couldn’t quite keep up with the speed of his mind.

“Hang on...” Bodie frowned.  “What about Petrov then?  What happened to him.”

Doyle jerked his head at the sizeable pile of burning embers.  “Well, he was last year’s king of the Maypole, wasn’t he?”

Bodie looked at the remains of the wicker man and then back at his partner.  “So what happened to you?”

“Before or after Britt Ekland?”

“Randy bastard,” Bodie said without heat.  “Why aren’t you as high as them?  Morag made you drink a pint’s worth, not to mention the stuff pumped into your room.”

Doyle smiled.  “Managed to spit more out than I swallowed, and anyway, Isla swapped the keg, clever girl.  No artificial flavourings, colourings or LSD.  They’d been drinking all afternoon, were too stoned to notice,” He snorted in disgust.  “Still too stoned to notice.  It’s how Soren controlled them.”

Bodie rubbed his eyes.  “He must have been mad, thinking he could commercially sell mead laced with LSD.”

“I think his aim was to attract more followers with the laced version,” Doyle said dryly.  “Plenty of impressionable and jaded students in the universities, isn’t there?  All looking for an alternative lifestyle and someone to follow.”  He shook his head impatiently. 

“But why Petrov?  Why you and not me?”

“Well that’s another thing that got out of hand.  In ancient times, a man who participated of his own free will was the perfect sacrifice, explains all that nonsense of trying to make me stay willingly.  If not, the next best thing was a bad or evil person.  In his own perverse way, Soren thought he was helping his country by getting rid of undesirables.  In other words, communists.”

Bodie was only half listening.  Heated words now being exchanged between Morag and Fraser.  Since they spoke in Gaelic he could only rely on their expressions as to what transpired between them but it wasn’t a happy conversation, particularly as the Druid’s name came up frequently - the only English word Bodie picked up in the exchange.  No accounting for taste, he thought, remembering that she had fancied the old fraud. 

“Her grandmother told me Isla is the keeper of the stones,” he told Doyle drowsily, turning his attention back to his partner.

“Yeah, well she can keep them.”  Doyle said shortly.  “Unless you want one for a souvenir?”

Bodie chuckled.  “I could give it as a present to Cowley.  Look nice in his office next to the filing cabinet.” 

“She was in love with him, you know.”  Doyle confided, his restless gaze again searching the trees.  “Petrov that is.  She didn’t realise at first what Soren was about, it was only after Petrov disappeared that she began to suspect that he was perverting the old traditions.  She went to Fraser for help, but with Morag in it up to her eyeballs, they couldn’t go to the police.”

“Blood is thicker than water,” Bodie guessed tiredly. “Besides, without proof, no one would have believed it.”

“Until I showed them my ID,” Doyle agreed.  “And convinced them we were slightly more interested than the local plods.”

“I suppose Petrov is dead then?” Bodie said hesitatingly.

Doyle hesitated as well, and finally brought his gaze back from the trees.  “I suppose.”

They looked at each other, seeing uncertainty reflected back, as usual, needing no words.  Bodie raised a doubtful brow and Doyle replied with an unconvinced shrug.

“Well,” Bodie said and stretched his aching limbs.  “Better go and wait for the cavalry then.”

“Thought that was you.”

“I’m only the seventh,” Bodie replied as they turned to go.  “Have to wait my turn, don’t I?’

 

***

 

 

Footsteps echoed across the dusty floor and George Cowley turned from his sombre contemplation of the river.  He stepped forward to greet his adversary, accompanied by a loud sniffle from his right and a morbidly muttered; “Dust!  Gets right up my hooter.”

Cowley’s lips twitched as the bearded Yashinkov approached.

“Hello comrade.”

“Hello tovarishch.”

Another whispered voice from behind him said:  “Here, did you see your film was on the other night?”

“I take it you got the news?” Cowley addressed his words to the Russian in front of him, but half his attention was behind him, on the muttered conversation between his two operatives.

“The Wicker Man?”

“Apparently so,” Yashinkov was unaware of any conversation other than the one he was having with the chief of CI5.  “It is distressing, so young a life.”

“That Britt Ekland” a low whistle issued from Doyle’s pursed lips.

“Purely a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cowley agreed diplomatically.

“Told you so,” this smugly from Bodie.  “Legs a mile long, wide hips, perfect set of t...”

Cowley cleared his throat significantly.

A brief hesitation then Bodie finished guilelessly with, “teeth.”

Yashinkov looked at him curiously.  Having effectively, if temporarily silenced his insubordinate operatives, Cowley continued.   “So you’ll agree comrade, that Zelenko no longer has any current business in this country and will be returning to Moscow.”

“Agreed, tovarishch.”  Yashinkov tilted his head politely and then added, as though in afterthought.  “Incidentally.  Gregor Petrov succumbed to his illness two nights ago.”  He paused, as though unsure of his next words, which he chose with great care.  “The influence he had on his son, as well as the KGB agents who stayed loyal to him, has died with him.  As far as the Kremlin is concerned, Nicholai Petrov met with accident on foreign soil, his remains buried there.”

He stared meaningfully at Cowley, who gazed blandly back, giving nothing away.  A ferocious sneeze broke the silence. Cowley gazed heavenward with barely concealed annoyance as Yashkinov stepped backwards.  “Until next time, tovarishch.”

His two henchman stepped forward and Bodie and Doyle did likewise, to give the expected hand shake.

Cowley watched his men, concealing his amusement as they exchanged customary insults with their opponents.

“Keep taking the pills,” Doyle’s opposite told him smugly.

“Better tell him then,” Doyle said tilting his head in his partner’s direction.

“Dust,” Bodie muttered.  And sniffed.

 

***

 

 

_Jaicen5_

_January 2012_

_****This fic is loosely based on Beltane and the fire festivals.  There are many versions of what the ancient celebrations might have involved, in this instance I just let Soren pervert it to his own needs.***_

 

 

_With thanks as always to_

_CI5mates and pmgms_

_for the beta’s_

_LCH for the Gaelic._

_Any grammar errors are my own_.

 

 


End file.
